Rainy days and Mondays

The word of the day is soporific. Mondays mornings are not easy around here. All the high school students are so tired after their exciting weekends. School is the perfect place to catch up on sleep, right? Not in my classroom! You better get up early and be on time to my class, or it results in an extra day of solitary confinement. So get to bed early! Plan ahead! Oh, I forgot. Teenagers now have that excuse that the brain is not fully developed until 21 and the reasoning part is not quite connected yet to the logical component. When I was in school, we didn’t have that excuse, and kids were held responsible for getting to class on time and staying awake in class…

Sop o rif ic -- adj. 1. inducing sleep. 2. drowsy. From Latin.

Right above soporific is soporiferous, which is a synonym for soporific. Feeling sleepy yet? All this talk about sleep has made me…I’ll just rest my eyes for a minute…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Goose Bumps

What gives you goose bumps? Do geese have bumps? Or is that only after the feathers are plucked? I don’t know, I never have plucked a goose…

Strange term: “goose bumps.” My dictionary lists goose flesh and goose PIMPLES. I never heard that last one. Goose bumps can be caused by the heebie-jeebies or by a cool breeze. I’m proud to report that my dictionary does list heebie-jeebies! I just checked. The last time I heard this question, though, I interpreted it in a positive way and thought about the things that give me goose bumps:
Good writing ( Not merely “good,” I mean eloquent),
a song vocalized by Mario Frangoulis accompanied by an orchestra,
a phone call from a far away friend (especially after you were just thinking about them),
a standing ovation from my audience,
my husband kissing the back of my neck….

Monosyllablic Words

Bane, daft, dolt, hurl, irk, squelch, words don’t have to be big, to be interesting!

Eloquence

Words are sooooo important. That’s why the word of the day is eloquence.

Does anyone look up words in dictionary anymore? Even I rarely do anymore and I used to study the dictionary when I was in grammar school. Now I just use the thesaurus option in MS Word.

An eloquent and loquacious speaker once told me,
“Eloquence is Silver. Silence is Golden.”

Loquacious--talkative, from Latin, loqui, to speak, which is also the root of
Eloquent--well spoken, expressive

Melliflous

Mellifluous, a lovely sounding word, means flowing sweetly and smoothly, said of words and sounds, which means the same as mellifluent, but sounds better, doesn't it?

These are related to Melliloquent, which is related to eloquent, but sweeter.

These are from Latin, melli, which means honey and loquens, to speak.

The opposite of melliflous is cacophonous, having a harsh sound. This is related to Cacophony, a combination of discordant sounds, disagreeable words which contain harsh letters or syllables. These are from Greek, caco, which is bad and phone, which is sound!

Thus ends our lesson for the day.

Melli Kilikimaka! That's Hawaiian for Merry Christmas! According to a song by Bing Crosby...

Vision

What is the difference between a vision and a hallucination? It’s all how you look at things. If you are perceptive or intuitive, you have visions. If you are crazy you have hallucinations. Of course, you may not be crazy if you have a brain tumor. It’s all how you look at things!

Introduction

This is the philolog's blog! I am a philolog -- a lover of words and wisdom! From the Greek. Sounds like "feel a log," emphasis on the first syllable. I truly love words, the way they sound, the way they look, and the impact they have on people. I believe the pen is mightier than the sword. I just want to write about words that I like. I want to share them with others like secrets. But they aren't secrets. The dictionary is full of them! I love dictionaries. I may not have used one in a while, but I think that will change now. There are just so many interesting words.

Philolog is a variation of philologue and philologist. Related to Philosophy. There are 2 PHs in that word that sound like F. It's good that I'm studying Greek. There is no F in the Greek alphabet, however, there is a symbol with the same sound. It's called "fee." Someday I'll be sophisticated enough to include a picture of fee in my blog. Thanks for bearing with me.

I used to do the Word Power quiz in the Reader's Digest when I was in elementary school. My teachers noticed I had an excellent vocabulary. I think if you don't use it, you lose it. My 8 year-old son's favorite book is the Children's Dictionary he got a few years ago for Christmas. He has asked me just to read that book to him at bedtime. He will pick out a picture and ask me to read the definition. He hasn't done that in a while. Maybe I'll pick it up again. We're reading Mary Poppins and it has some unfamiliar words in it. Like perambulator. Who here knows what a perambulator is? It's a British term for stroller. I don't know if I've ever heard the word before, it's not very common these days, but seeing ambul in there, I recognized as walking (ambling), and figured it out from the context. We used to have to do that in my elementary school. I wonder if they do that anymore.

In this blog I hope to enliven your vocabulary, and maybe make you think. I might even inspire someone to pick up a dictionary! I really just want to share my love of words. I may include some poems or phrases that particularly sing to me. Words are my tools. I am a hypnosis consultant. I use words to help others change their behavior. It’s fascinating. Sometimes I’m quite clever. The right word can really make a difference. I will write more about this soon. Thanks for listening. And please feel free to give feedback. Nothing is this blog should be peremptory.

That’s a great word! There are 2 for today: philolog and peremptory (precluding further debate).