Some quotes, some words
roman a clef (ro-mahn ah KLAY) noun, plural romans a clef
A novel that depicts (usually famous) real people and events
under the guise of fiction.
[From French roman à clef, literally, a novel with a key.]
All fiction has a grain of truth, but a roman a clef has it by the bushel. Roman a clef dates back to seventeenth century France. In the beginning, a roman a clef really did have a key that was published
separately. In these times, you can simply go on the Internet and search using Google. An example of roman a clef is Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
These days the term can apply to any work of fiction, for example, a movie, not just a novel. A blend term "faction" has also been used, after "fact" presented as "fiction".
"[Geraldine] Brooks has borrowed details not just from Little Women but from the story of Alcott's own extraordinary father, Bronson Alcott,a man whose freethinking, utopian views were all downplayed in his
daughter's roman a clef."
Michelle Griffin; March; Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Apr 2, 2005.
This week's theme: words about books.
the worthless word for the day is: heteroclite
[fr. Gk heteroklitos, irregularly inflected]
/HET ur uh klyt/
1) Gram. irregularly inflected
2) fig. [a] abnormal, anomalous, off the beaten path [n] obs. a person or thing that fits such description; a maverick
"Nor could I have dreamed the heteroclite crew..."
- Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun (1997)
"I am acutely aware that this thesis will meet with some resistance because it is still somewhat
unfashionable to assert that any work of literature, no less a work as complex and heteroclite as
Ulysses, can be approached as having established a fixed center.. that governs its meaning."
- Stephen Sicari, Twentieth Century Lit., Fall 1997
"Our Parliament would affect to be an heteroclite to all other parliaments."
- Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality (1792)
http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
the worthless word for the day is: antumbra
[L. umbra, shadow + ant-, against]
the so-called "negative" shadow of the Moon that appears when the Moon is on the far side
of its orbit and its umbral shadow is not long enough to reach Earth; hence, atumbral:
referring to that shadow
"The curvature of Earth's surface causes a single solar eclipse to be observed as annular from some
locations but total from other locations. A total eclipse is seen from places on the Earth's surface
that lie along the path of the eclipse and are physically closer to the Moon, and so intersect
the Moon's umbra; other locations, further from the Moon, fall in the Moon's antumbra and the
eclipse is annular."
- Wikipedia, Solar eclipse
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Quotes of the Day for April 19, 2005
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
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I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
-- Wernher von Braun
My mother buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping.
-- Rita Rudner
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
-- Robert Benchley
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
-- Franz Kafka
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Quotes of the Day for April 16, 2005
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
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After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
-- Cato the Elder
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
-- H. L. Mencken
Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.
-- Clive James
Word of the Day for Friday April 22, 2005
atavism \AT-uh-viz-uhm\, noun:
1. The reappearance in an organism of characteristics of some
remote ancestor after several generations of absence.
2. One that exhibits atavism; a throwback.
3. Reversion to an earlier behavior, outlook, or approach.
Occasionally a modern whale is born having sprouted a leg
or two -- a genetic throwback known as an atavism.
--Douglas H. Chadwick, "Evolution of whales," [1]National
Geographic, November 2001
Read avidly in Europe and the United States in the 1890s,
The Female Offender argues that women criminals are
atavisms or throwbacks to earlier evolutionary stages,
marked by physical anomalies such as coarse features.
--Nicole Rafter, "Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in
Fin-de-Siecle Paris," [2]The Women's Review of Books,
October 1, 1997
The Enlightenment was the movement of thought, starting in
the late 17th century and extending as far as the 19th
century with political economists such as David Hume, Adam
Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which
self-consciously set out to liberate human reason from
mediaeval atavism, superstition and error.
-- Melanie Phillips, [3]All Must Have Prizes
Nairn rejected the view of nationalist movements, purveyed
by many thinkers on the liberal and Marxist left, as
residues of tribal atavism.
--John Gray, "Little Scotlander," [4]New Statesman, January
24, 2000
At best, atavism is a harmless fantasy, not sustainable
with any degree of persistent realism under skies
crisscrossed by satellites and jet aircraft.
--Shiva Naipaul, "Aborigines: primitive chic in Australia,"
[5]New Republic, April 22, 1985
Milton obviously invokes vassalage for its suggestion of
atavism, back-stepping toward feudal obligation and
subjugation of individual liberty.
--Mary C. Fenton, "Hope, land ownership, and Milton's
'Paradise within,'" [6]Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900, January 2003
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Atavism comes from French atavisme, from Latin atavus,
"ancestor," from atta, "daddy" + avus, "grandfather." The
adjective form is atavistic /at-uh-VIS-tik/.
References
1. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
2. http://www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview/
3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316881805/ref=nosim/lexico
4. http://www.newstatesman.com/
5. http://www.tnr.com/
6. http://www.jstor.org/journals/00393657.html
Dictionary.com
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Are you getting a glimpse of spring or taking a glance? Settle
disputes with Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of Usage.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?conusg.htm&6/
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The Word of the Day for April 22 is:
callithump \KAL-uh-thump\ noun
: a noisy boisterous band or parade
Example sentence:
The town is trying to enlist one of Hollywood's most famous leading men to serve as grand
marshal for this year's Memorial Day callithump.
Did you know?
"Callithump" and the related adjective "callithumpian" are Americanisms, but their roots
stretch back to England. In the 19th century, the noun "callithumpian" was used in the U.S. of
boisterous roisterers who had their own makeshift New Year's parade. Their band instruments consisted of
crude noisemakers such as pots, tin horns and cowbells. The antecedent of "callithumpians" is an
18th-century British dialect term for another noisy group, the "Gallithumpians," who made a rumpus
on election days in southern England. Today, the words "callithump" and "callithumpian" see
occasional use, especially in the names of specific bands and parades. The callithumpian bands and
parades of today are more organized than those of the past, but they retain an association with noise
and boisterous fun.
the worthless word for the day is: huderon
[Sc. ?] obs.
lazy (or slovenly, according to Jamieson)
"A morning-sleep is worth a foldful of sheep
to a huderon duderon Daw."
- James Kelly, A complete collection of
Scotish proverbs (1721)
"A daw is a sluggard. Duderon is undefined
and probably just reduplicative, as in
higgledy-piggledy."
- Philip Howard, Sunday Times, 22 March 2004
-tsuwm
http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
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Quotes of the Day for April 22, 2005
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
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O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
-- Saint Augustine
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
-- Thomas Carlyle
The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it.
-- Doris Day
If the fans don't wanna come out to the ballpark, no one can stop 'em.
-- Yogi Berra, as quoted by Joe Garagiola on the Jack Paar show, NBC 1963
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Quotes of the Day for April 15, 2005
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
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There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
-- Robert Byrne
There it was, hidden in alphabetical order.
-- Rita Holt
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
-- Marston Bates
Living hell is the best revenge.
-- Adrienne E. Gusoff