The Best New Altered Words
In the Washington Post’s annual Mensa Invitational, readers are invited to alter any word from the dictionary and create a new definition. These are this year’s winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
Killing Fish And Holding On To Reality
Bert and I went to his family’s hunting and fishing cabin for a week of pursuing trout. The small stout cabin squats in a clearing, snuggled up next to a hillside, near the center of Pennsylvania’s Tioga State Forest. The center of the forest is the only thing that the cabin is near. We arrived late in the evening and went directly to bed. The next morning, early, after we cooked and ate breakfast, Bert said, “Are you ready to kill some fish?”
Thoughts Masquerading As Feelings
In the latter years of the last century it became at least okay if not expected that people would express their feelings to one another. But not everyone who got the memo declaring that feelings were okay is able or willing to recognize or express them. That was when people began to pawn off thoughts as if they were feelings.
Here is a tip for those who wish to get better at distinguishing thoughts from feelings. Whenever you hear yourself or someone else begin a sentence with the words, “I feel that…”, be prepared to hear a thought, usually judgmental, masquerading as a feeling. “I feel that she is avoiding me.” “I feel that the car is overpriced.” Those are thoughts, not feelings.
How Many Names For Hot?
The notion that Eskimo people have a particular and large number of words for snow has become a popular urban myth that even has a Wikipedia entry:
In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English…the number of Eskimo words for snow is essentially unbounded.
This came up because The Scout was looking at a book titled, The Newfoundland Tongue (why she was looking at that particular book is another story). It lists forty-three terms that Newfoundlanders use to describe wind. Here are a few examples:
