I was peeling carrots and I asked my nephew to get me a kettle to put them into. He said it was a pot. I didn't really care what he wanted to call it. Just get it so I can make dinner. I was visiting at his house, his Mother's house. But he went on about it, correcting me.

In fact, I still don't know which is perfectly correct and I don't very much care. I will still, likely, say pot or kettle and mean the same thing. The word is trivial, the meaning was pretty clear.

But he was hung up on the nuance of pot versus kettle. He was not helping me peel carrots, potatoes or get dinner cooking. Which mattered more? I think he would have figured out the lack of importance in the nuance if he had no dinner.

But, a lot of people seem to get hung up on trivial things, like nuances these days.

I do think the word matters and getting it correct matters, but it depends on the circumstances. There are times when communication needs to be clear, when communication is very important and there are times when you just want something to boil the carrots in.

This quote is about the break between having the dream and living with it. But, you can read so much into a few words.

I’m a fan of writer Ann Patchett, whose book, Truth and Beauty, is one of my favourites. This week, thanks to the website, Brain Pickings, I came across a fantastic Patchett quotation that hit very close to home, especially the last line:

“The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write — and many of the people who do write — get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”

The stark disappointment of words is something I know a little too much about. So often the idea in my head, which initially seems so good, falls apart once I begin to try to assemble the words on paper. Suddenly my remarkable idea becomes frustratingly ordinary.

Source: Lindy Mechefske

This quote makes me think about writers having to kill their babies. That was a quote I read about editing your writing. Your words and phrases being taken out of existence. Deleting unnecessary wordage. Editing.

But, I find in life, the idea of editing things or deleting them, or exterminating... there are lots of good words for it... is an important skill to have. All things but in moderation. If you can master that in life you will save yourself a lot of stress, have more space (physically and mentally) and save money too.

Of course, no one should literally kill babies, or other children. At least let them get to adulthood, or the age of 20, and be guilty of something on the extreme side, first. Its ok to be a little dramatic, just not too literal about it.

My Mom forwarded this to me in email: 

Heteronyms... Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym. You think English is easy? I think a retired English teacher was bored...THIS IS GREAT! Read all the way to the end... This took a lot of work to put together!

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the base of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes..
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France .. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible..

PS. - Why doesn't Buick'; rhyme with quick'?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'. It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special..

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.......it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

Use the word of the day in a tweet and include #definethis. Daily winners when 3 or more ppl play. Prize goes to monthly winners.

Try this as a writing exercise. Each word is unusual, not well known. Don't feel less than brilliant if you have to look them up. So many are words I have heard and assumed I understood what they mean from the context they were used in. But, that doesn't mean I really understand the word.

Learn something new every day.

From the Free Dictionary - Dystopia: an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be.

Dystopia is the opposite of a utopia. It's a pretty great word if you're a science fiction fan, like myself. I hadn't heard of it before. Or, at least I didn't remember it. My nephew started playing a new game on his PS3, BioShock. It's a real experience into dystopian societies.  Pretty grim in fact. I was looking up more information about the storyline and characters when I came across the word dystopia in a write up about the game. So I had to look up the word. It was self explanatory really but still, I gave into temptation to find out more.

Exploring Dystopia - a forum for science fiction and horror fans. There is an old site too, pretty abandoned and comes with pop up ads and a thick banner on top.  But the site itself is pretty cool if you overlook the ad junk. Too bad they didn't keep it up and move it to a different free host.

Suite101: Utopian/ Dystopian Fiction.

Dystopia -  A cyberpunk game.