Word Grrls

I ran the WordGrrls.com site from whatever to whatever. I’ll look up the dates sometime. It was a site for writers. I used to post writing exercises and ideas for writing inspiration. I’ve kept my posts from the old site but decided not to keep the domain.

There are 2,384 posts filed in Word Grrls (this is page 8 of 398).

Words You Didn’t Know Had Opposites

A chance to learn some new words. I like the opposite of deja vu, jamais vu. When would you ever use it in conversation? But, it is interesting to know.
What’s the opposite of disgruntled? Chances are you’re thinking the answer should rightly be gruntled—but is that really a word you recognize? The problem here is that disgruntled, alongside the likes of uncouth, disheveled, distraught, inert, and intrepid, is an example of an unpaired word, namely one that looks like it should have an apparently straightforward opposite, but in practice really doesn’t.
Words like these tend to come about either when a prefixed or suffixed form of a word is adopted into the language while its root is not, or when the inflected or affixed form of a word survives, while its uninflected root form falls out of use. This was the case with disgruntled, which derives from an ancient Middle English word, gruntel, meaning “to grumble” or “complain,” which has long since fallen from use—although the gap left by disgruntled has led some dictionaries to list gruntled as a modern-day back-formation.
2. ANONYMOUS
Anonymous literally means “without a name.” Its opposite is onymous, which is typically used to refer to books, legal papers, artworks, musical compositions, and similar documents the authorship of which is known without doubt.
3. AUTOMATON
If an automaton is a machine capable of moving itself, then the opposite is called a heteromaton—a device that relies solely on external forces for movement.
4. CATASTROPHE
If a catastrophe is a sudden, unpredictable, and devastating event, then an equally sudden or unexpected event of sheer joy or good fortune is a eucatastrophe. This term was coined by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien in 1944, who originally used it to describe a sudden or fortuitous event in the plot of a story that turns around the protagonist’s chances or prospects, and brings about the resolution of the narrative.
5. DÉJÀ VU
Over the years, psychologists have identified a number of different phenomena similar to déjà vu (literally “already seen” in French). Among them is presque vu (“almost seen”), the tip-of-the-tongue feeling that you’re about to remember something you’ve forgotten; déjà vécu (“already experienced”), a particularly intense form of déjà vu that makes it almost impossible to discern the present from the past; and déjà visité (“already visited”), which describes a person’s surprising foreknowledge of a place they’ve never actually been to before—like unthinkingly knowing your way around a foreign town or city while on holiday. The opposite of déjà vu, however, is usually said to be jamais vu (“never seen”): so if déjà vudescribes the eerie sensation that something new has actually taken place before, in the case of jamais vu a person believes that a situation that is actually very familiar and has happened before is entirely new.
7. EUPHEMISM
If a euphemism involves the use of a politer word or phrase in place of a more distasteful or objectionable one, a dysphemism is the deliberate use of an impolite or unpleasant term in place of a perfectly inoffensive one. Dysphemism is often used for rhetorical effect, in order to shock or shake up an audience, or simply for comic effect.
10. POSTPONE
To bring a date forward in time rather than postponing it is to prepone it.

Ruderal – Growing Where it Can

Found this on Twitter today. It’s a great word for urban exploration, at least for me. I do like the plants growing in odd places: rooftops, cracked cement, and railway tracks as shown in the photograph. Sort of abandoned gardens and yet, most were never planted deliberately. Where have you seen something growing in spite of it’s habitat?

Word of the day: “ruderal” – able to thrive on disturbed or broken ground, or among waste (Latin rudus, rubble). Used esp. of plant species.

How do you Name a Woman?

Does it bother you to hear an adult man call his wife “Mother”, “MaMa” or other words similar? How about people who call themselves their pet’s “Mother”, “Daddy”, etc.?

Names are our identity/ identification. Names are how other people view us. I do think it is a bit odd when people refer to another person by their role – especially when it isn’t the role they have for the person who spoke. (Or that whole being your dog’s Mother thing, that just annoys me, personally).

My Dad used to refer to our Mom as “your Mother”. I haven’t thought of it for years. But, someone else I happened to mention it to found it very odd, they didn’t like it.

Other people don’t like hearing a husband refer to his wife as “Mother”. Does it help to think it is the short form for the Mother of his children? I’m sure that’s how it is intended but it does always sound as if he is calling his wife his Mother. What does he call his real Mother? Maybe “Grandma”?

Today in the Arab world, there is a custom still in place to not speak a woman’s name in public after she becomes a mother. In her 2011 book Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics, linguistics professor Sally McConnell-Ginet wrote about how in some historical periods in China, women were only referred to by “relational forms,” names like “oldest sister” or “Lee’s wife,” while men were more often referred to by their individual names. These might sound odd to our modern ear, but chances are most of us have witnessed something similar in our lifetime.

Source: The Rise of ‘Mama’ : Longreads Blog

I found this, part of a long post about the use of the word “Mama”. However, the idea that a Mother loses her name was more interesting to me. When a woman marries she (still usually) changes her last name. She loses her family identity – or exchanges it for a new family identity. Then she has children and loses even her own personal identity as an individual. From then on she becomes a role, not an individual. Isn’t that like a nun too? They are referred to as “Mother Someone”, “Sister Someone”.

Without getting feminist about it, I wonder why or how our culture evolved to take away a woman’s name? It’s really interesting to think about. Not so much about laws, rights, fairness, equality, etc. But, just the fact of it.

Canadian Writer Events Links from the old dmoz

 

Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival

 

Speakers, seminars, and general information.

 

Cabot Trail Writers Festival

 

Details of the festival, including authors, activities, sponsors. Archives of previous festivals.

 

Eden Mills Writers’ Festival

 

An annual one day event coordinated with The Guelph Jazz Festival, features authors readings and discussions of their works.

 

LitFest

 

Edmonton International Literary Festival. Established in 2002 as the successor of the Alberta Book Fair, which was an annual trade fair for almost 20 years.

 

Ottawa International Writers Festival

 

Ten day writers festival every September, in Ottawa, Ontario. The OIWF serves emerging Canadian talent by placing them on stage at the National Arts Centre with some of the world’s greatest writers.

 

Reading Toronto

 

What’s happening in Toronto with culture, arts, design, architecture, music, photography, performance, film.

 

Real Vancouver Writers’ Series

 

Curates, markets, and produces public events featuring established and emerging writers a minimum of four times a year at locations within the city of Vancouver.

 

Surrey International Writers’ Conference

 

Overview, schedules, and speakers. Held every October.

 

Vancouver Writers Fest

 

Festival ignites a passion for reading and writing by producing a number of special events and an annual festival that features writers from around the world. Granville Island.

 

The Word on the Street

 

Book and magazine fair celebrating literacy and the printed word. Locations include Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Toronto, Halifax, and Kitchener.

 

Wordfest

 

News and history of the not-for-profit organization that holds a literary festival in October.

 

Words Aloud

 

A spoken word and storytelling festival, presenting the best in spoken word from across Canada and beyond. Durham, Ontario.

 

 

Write The Nation Tour

 

On October 1st, 2004, Mingus Tourette and a band of poets and writers embarked on a three-week, cross-country Canadian literary tour.

Imitations in Words

Watching Museum Diaries early this morning on TVO and I noticed a word they used when talking about fakes and forgeries, pastiche. It is interesting how fakes have become their own genre. Antique fakes can be as interesting and historical as the real artifacts. Also, there is still the danger of being wrong and deciding an item is fake when it is not. Some artifacts are just created differently from the standard at the time. People could be innovative hundreds and thousands of years ago too. So, a different colour, style, etc, is not a sure sign of a forgery or fake. 
Wikipedia – A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.