Yvonne
… Is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we have encountered in our reading.It is hosted by Kathy, over at ‘BermudaOnion’s Weblog’.You can either stop by and leave a link to your own ‘mystery’ words of the week, or just browse the eclectic mix of words that others have discovered, there is always a great selection.
Don’t forget that Kathy and the rest of us, all love to read your comments as well, so that we can visit and share your words of the week!
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1. Those of you who stopped by to check out my ‘Book Beginnings’ post for this book, will probably recall me using this phrase, but for those of you who missed it, I thought it worthy of a mention. The book in question is a poetical fiction novel, ‘And The Soft Wind Blows’ by Lance Umenhoffer, which contains many different and unusual writing techniques ….
SCRIPTIO CONTINUA
SCRIPTIO CONTINUA
“Continuous script” in Latin is a style of writing without word dividers, that is, without spaces or other marks between words or sentences.
In the West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions use word dividers, but these are rare in the later periods when scriptio continua becomes the norm (in Classical Greek and late Classical Latin). By around 1000 AD, alphabetical texts in Europe are written with spaces between words. Scriptio continua is still in use in Thai, other Southeast Asian abugidas (Burmese, Khmer, Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese script), Lao, and in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese and Japanese) though with sentence breaks. Modern vernacular Chinese differs from ancient scriptio continua in that it does at least use punctuation, although this was borrowed from the West only about a century ago. Before this, the only forms of punctuation found in Chinese writings were punctuations to denote quotes, proper nouns, and emphasis.
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2. It is fate how one thing can sometimes lead unexpectedly to another and whilst researching that last definition, I encountered another new word ….
An inscription of Swampy Cree using Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, an abugida developed by Christian missionaries for Aboriginal Canadian languages
ABUGIDA
Scriptio continua is still in use in Thai, other Southeast Asian abugidas (Burmese, Khmer, Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese script), Lao, and in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese and Japanese) though with sentence breaks.
ABUGIDA
Is a kind of syllabary in which the vowel is changed by modifying the base consonant symbol, so that all the forms that represent a given consonant plus each vowel resemble one another.
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3. Which leads me on to some thing completely different … This word I discovered when conducting some research, before commenting on a post, over at fellow blogger site ‘Pen And Paper’, hosted by the lovely Tracy. Given how many frogs we have discovered in our back garden just recently, this scenario is a distinct possibility … hubbie is definitely the ‘frog catcher’ in our house, you won’t find me kissing any of them!
RANIDAPHOBIA
RANIDAPHOBIA
A morbid fear of frogs.
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4. And finally this time … This word I came across in a quote I particularly liked. Whilst I could work out the general meaning of the word from the context in which it was used, the two simply didn’t come together in my mind, with the word not matching the definition at all!
LOGORRHOEA
Writers have two main problems. One is writer’s block, when words won’t come at all, and the other is logorrhoea, when the words come so fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time
Quote attributed to author Cecilia Bartholomew
LOGORRHOEA
A communication disorder resulting in incoherent talkativeness
Speech or writing which is deemed to use an excess of words
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That’s all from me. What new words have you discovered this time? … I can’t wait to stop by and check them out!
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All are new to me, although I should have known ranidaphobia, since my mother in law is terrified of frogs!
Hi Vicki,
I am not terrified of frogs, although I wouldn’t be able to pick one up, and toads are a whole different ball game! Unfortunately, this is one of the side effects of having a pond (two in our case), especially when one of them is lily pad heaven! We have had a fantastic display of deep pink water lilies this year, they obviously enjoy the long hot spells of weather!
I hope that all is well with you and thanks for stopping by.
I love visiting Tracy’s blog although since Google reader went away I sometimes go weeks without visiting non-meme blogs – just not enough time.
I think logorrhea would be a great National Spelling Bee word 🙂
Hi Mary,
I generally reply to all comments left here at Fiction Books and as part of that exercise, I will make a return visit to the commenter’s blog. I do try to blog hop to some of my other favourite sites occasionally, but not nearly as much as I would like to – as you say, just not enough time!
Tracy is a regular contributor, so I am often over at ‘Pen and Paper’ and quite often find myself referencing the site, as she always has such cool posts.
It is so easy to mis-spell logorrhoea, (LOL that you mis-pelled it in your comment!) that it would indeed be a great word for any spelling competition or quiz.. Your National Spelling Bee sounds like such a great project.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by, I appreciate your thoughtful comment.
Scriptio Continua sounds like a spell from Harry Potter. I actually think it would be difficult to read something written in that style. I struggle when they leave out quotation marks and think I would be lost without spaces.
It would be tough to live in our neighborhood if you had ranidaophobia. We have 2 ponds and they are brimming with frogs.
Hi Kathy,
Tracy’s post originally gave me the inspiration for ranidaphobia, however hubbie sealed the deal, when he was clearing shrubs and bushes so that we could weatherproof some fencing. The ground was alive with frogs and a very large toad, which he moved back to be closer to the two ponds which we also have, although they do have to compete for space with some extremely large resident koi. There have been some rather impressive lily pads for them to call home this year though, a real bumper crop.
Thanks for hosting and visiting commenting bloggers, it is always appreciated.
Wow! What interesting words. All completely new to my vocabulary.
Hi Jane,
Thanks for stopping by, I am pleased that you found some new words of interest here this week. I love discovering new words – that’s the easy part – remembering them and being able to use them in everyday conversation – now that’s something else entirely!
I’m not really sure which is my favourite word this week, as they are all so diverse, however ‘scriptio continua’, has a nice ring to it!
Enjoy the rest of your week.
New words for me too today. Though I may not always get it right, I am glad we have punctuation and spaces in our modern day writing. That would be difficult.
Hi Judy,
Bad grammar, spelling and punctuation, really wind me up when I am reading and reviewing a so say professionally edited and published book. – I then have to stop and take a raincheck, thinking back to some of the very silly mistakes I make on a daily basis!
Mistakes or not, like yourself, I just can’t begin to envisage a day to day life without any form of spacing or punctuation in our written word. Even now, it is apparently permissible to miss out hyphens, speech marks and inverted commas – but I just can’t be doing with all that, it is simply encouraging youngsters to become lazy. Everything is done for speed these days and is organised to fit in with the lowest common denominator, rather than encouraging youngsters to up their game.
Rant over, it really does feel so much better to get things off my chest once in a while!
Thanks for the interesting comment, I appreciate you stopping by.
Most of these were new to me, as well.
No. 1, while maybe not a phrase I could have quoted you off the top of my head, is something I’m familiar with. I’ve read too many books set in ancient Rome where they complain of having to work through a scroll/letter, figuring out the word breaks.
I’ve never heard No. 2 in my life and I’m not sure I understand it even after reading the definition!
And pardon my comparison, but I’ve always thought of that last one as “diarrhea of the mouth”.
I remembered to note a couple of words I didn’t know when I was reading Mink River by Brian Doyle awhile back in anticipation of one of these posts. 🙂 You may be familiar with both, but they were new to me (though I could have figured out the first by context).
1. Hornswoggled: Informal, chiefly North American, get the better of (someone) by cheating or deception.
2. Concatenation: A series of interconnected things, the action of linking things together in a series, or the condition of being linked in such a way.
Hi Kelly,
I think that scriptio continua was a system mainly used in Greek and Latin, so your association with books set in ancient Rome, is probably well founded, if the stories involve scribes or scholars. I’m not sure I could function if there were no spaces or punctuation in sentences, translation would all be guess work, although I suppose if that was the style you were used to, it would come more naturally.
I’m not sure that I understand abugida, but I researched another site and from what I can make out, it seems as though each symbol represents one defined consonant and one defined vowel. If that is right, just think how many different symbols there are to cater for every consonant with every variation of vowels!
You have discovered two great words, although I do know of hornswoggled, but only because it was a word I came across in one of my books and didn’t know what it meant, as it is not a word used here in the UK.
I love concatenation, although I have to say it very carefully and slowly, to avoid it sounding like completely different words. I managed to find a couple of examples of it being used in a sentence, although fitting it into everyday conversation, is going to be a bit more of a challenge.
Thanks for sharing your words, it was fun this week, as on the whole, the words were quite complicated.
Great words this week and every one of them new to me. I think I might have difficulty slipping SCRIPTIO CONTINUA in to too many sentences which is what I like to do with any new ‘Wednesday Words’ but hey I’ll give it a go.
Hi Tracy,
I think that you might struggle a bit this time. I think the only one which lends itself to being included in a sentence easily is ranidaphobia, although I would just love to see the look on peoples faces if you tried to introduce logorrhoea into the conversation, unless you did a good job, it could sound quite disgusting!
Scriptio Continua would be a bit more of an intellectual challenge, although when I am in a hurry writing on the blog, I can do a pretty passable imitation of it, talk about hands and brain not working together!
I do hope that you don’t mind me leaving links to your blog and citing posts from it. I quite often find snippets of useful information and it is good to be able to reference a point, always leaving the relevant links as thanks, of course. Please let me know if you would rather I didn’t.
All your words are new to me as well. They don’t roll off my tongue easily. It will take practice to fit them into everyday conversation. lol I’m glad you shared then with us today.
Hi Margot,
I’m not sure that any of those words would be easy, or probably even feasible, to drop into everyday conversation, unless you were having a conversation about frogs – like you do! LOL!
I particularly liked the quote from Cecilia Bartholomew. It is not only in writing that it is so difficult to achieve the ‘happy medium’ though, is it? I quite often find myself the victim of loggorhoea, by either talking excessively and too quickly, or becoming totally dumbstruck and tongue-tied. Or by writing reams of pointless drivel, when one or two well chosen words would have sufficed.
I know – you don’t have to say it! All I really needed to write was: Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate the visit and comment.
Wow, I felt like I got a cultural lesson as well as some info about new words. The pictures are great. I think I’ve heard logorrhoea before- it reminds of of diarrhea of the mouth. Gross, I know. But vivid.
Hi Julia,
Sorry! I didn’t set out to make this post like a lesson, it’s meant to be fun, so perhaps I should have mixed the words up a little!
I did think that logorrhoea was quite a quirky word, which is a nice way of saying gross, as my thoughts about it were pretty much the same as yours. If they really wanted this to be a ‘rrhoea – rrhea’ word, you would have thought that ‘log’ wouldn’t have been the first prefix to spring to mind!
Perhaps next time, my words won’t be quite so serious! Thanks for the comment, I always appreciate them.
Very interesting words.
Thanks Mary Ann, I shall be stopping by shortly to see what new words you are sharing with us all this week.
I appreciate the visit.
All new words to me! 🙂
Hi Nikki,
Great to have you back online. I have emailed a couple of times to no avail. Thanks for getting in touch, at least I know you are okay.
Speak Soon.