Mentalist Denotation

Interesting quotation and definition:

"The two most beautiful words in the English language are:
check enclosed."
Dorothy Parker

"Mentalist, noun. Someone who uses mental acuity, hypnosis and/or suggestion. A master manipulator of thoughts and behavior."
This is from the TV show, The Mentalist, not from any dictionary. The denotation is slightly different, but less dramatic.

The denotation is the official meaning of a word, the written meaning.

GAD ZOOKS!! Mentalist is not in my pocket dictionary!

Aphorism

In my profile it says, I like aphorisms. So what is an aphorism? It is a brief statement of truth, a maxim. It comes from Greek.



I do like them brief. You may notice that any quotations I put in my blogs are aphoristic; I do not like quotations that ramble on for several sentences.



I prefer something brief, like: "Belief creates Biology." Wayne Dyer.

Where's your moxie?

Curses! We've been jimmy-jacked!



I just saw the movie, The Battle of the Smithsonian. It was funny. There was a lifesized manequin of Amelia Earhardt and she came to life, with very colorful language. Somehow, even though the other figures, from ancient Egypt or Russia, spoke modern English, with a thorough understanding of the current idioms and slang expressions, she was allowed to use some uncommon language, possibly from her own era.



The word I was thinking about was moxie. Amelia said it many times and my son asked me what it meant after the movie. Moxie is a great word! I think it means Boldness, daring, fearlessness.



It means boldness or courage and I think it may come from Yiddish. It is not in my pocket dictionary and not in my thesaurus for Word.

Delectable email

I got an interesting email a few days ago (see http://musinglog.blogspot.com), which wished me a Cooperation Delectation. It was written in broken English, so I didn't even suspect that Delectation would be in the dictionary. It is!

Delectation means enjoyment, delight, and is from a Latin root. It is related to the word, delectable!

Brisk or Brusque

The words, brisk and brusque sound very much alike, but I am intrigued by the spelling.

Brisk means quick or sudden, and comes from the same French root as brusque!

Brusque, however, means rude or blunt.

I hope I have answered all your questions briskly, but not brusquely.