Words

Do you remember vocabulary books? These were slim exercise books given out at school in which we would write new words. I only recall them for a brief period of time; perhaps they were superseded by changes in curriculum and chaotic lessons. But I rather liked them, so I have decided to resurrect the idea.

Every time I discover a new word it gets recorded in my notebook. I have a guess what I think the words means and then look it up later when I get a chance. Here are a selection for your amusement!

Word: Lexical

I think: Correct terminology
Actual meaning: A dictionary term or definition
How close was I? Not bad

Word: Inchoate
I think: Incoherent
Actual meaning: Just begun, not fully formed, rudimentary
How close was I? Not even vaguely! Although I can see my thought pattern – same word family, right? (Wrong!)

Word: Coterie

I think: Group
Actual meaning: Small group with shared interests, exclusive to others
How close was I? Spot on

Word: Amanuensis
I think: Some sort of teacher
Actual meaning: Performing a function by hand, i.e. writing down the words of another. In Latin a  manual labourer / secretary
How close was I? Way out

Word: Simony
I think: Traitor or treachery
Actual meaning: Paying for a position within church, trafficking for money within spiritual things
How close was I? Close but no biscuit

I love discovering new words and am always rather thrilled when I am reading and a word leaps out that I've never seen before. I like reading around it, trying to guess, seeing if there are any clues. Sometimes these guesses can put an interesting slant on sentences, one the author had not foreseen. Hence the notebook!

Be wherry of words

I just heard on the television a director talking about a film festival based about the east end of London. He said that people of the past ‘left a residue’, which to be honest made me feel a bit queasy. I pictured a thin film of people left smeared onto brickwork and windows. I don’t think that is quite the image he was hoping to achieve.

This leads me to a mistake I made very early on with writing. I put on the page that ‘the rain was running in rivets down the window screen’ – you can just hear the smashing of glass, can’t you? Of course I meant rivulets…

But it is enormously easy to reach for the wrong word when you are writing (unless you are a Writing Guru. Such people do exist, so I hear). Homonyms are the most obvious ones…

Eye have always liked poet tree
Eye think eye wood be rather good
If only eye didn’t believe my spell-chequer
Witch says lies are better than Ruth
I have severed books and like to reed
When the whether outside is coaled
One day I will right and rime my own
Poems when I am feeling bowled

Today I have gone backwards to pick at chapter eighteen. I feel a bit better about it now, so tomorrow will be facing chapter nineteen again. I just need to somehow propel myself over this hurdle and then I think I will be fine. What I need, in fact, is a medieval rock-slinging contraption. I could sit in it and it could throw me into chapter twenty. Although if you’re all out of rock-slinging contraptions, I notice Madeira cake works pretty well instead.

I think one of the first things I will do when I finish this novel is join a gym.