Creative Vocabulary


	Creative Vocabulary

Hana Alberts

4-9-2008 2:21 PM

724 views

Hana Alberts says:

I love articles about language, and this essay on the editorial page of the Times today does a good job mixing wordplay and wonderment.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/cc38607c-f6af-48ac-a283-300476f672b9/6C21E825-2942-4B10-899D-91C4FA60CE60/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/opinion/09wed4.html?ref=opinion" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/opinion/09wed4.html?ref=opinion" style="font-size: 11px;">www.nytimes.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/opinion/09wed4.html?ref=opinion">It brings me back to that childhood feeling of being happily encumbered with new words and trying them out tentatively, watching to see, on the faces around me, whether I’d misused them. I trust myself to employ only a few easy sailing terms, like mast and anchor. I worry about the rest. I somehow imagine myself standing at the tiller and shouting out nonsensical commands: “Vang the leach!” “Steeve the bumkin!” “Harden the Quangle-Wangle!”</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/opinion/09wed4.html?ref=opinion">There is something endlessly appealing about the care with which the contents of the world, and especially the tools of the working world, have been named.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/opinion/09wed4.html?ref=opinion"><P>I look back and wonder what it is I’ve been doing innately since childhood, and I can think only of this. I’ve been picking up words one by one, feeling their heft, wondering who’s used them before, and slowly adding them to my permanent collection. </P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/6C21E825-2942-4B10-899D-91C4FA60CE60/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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