Wordiness: grawlix

I didn't know I didn't know this word, till I came across this question:

"What does one call the use of random non-alphabet characters to indicate cursing?"

You know: *^!*@&#^(^$#@(*(*@$(#^*$

The answer: "grawlix", and it dates back to 1964. See the full explanation at Ask H&FJ.

(Via Swissmiss.)

Wordiness: Godzone

Apropos of the holiday, I present to you the most festive new word in the Oxford English Dictionary's December 2007 release:

Godzone n. New Zealand.

You'll have to see the release for a fuller explanation.

Merry Xmas, everybody!

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: wordiness, Godzone, New Zealand

Wordiness: repple-depple

I'm finally reading Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (thanks, Wahj!) and the word "repple-depple" totally threw me for a loop. It's not the only instance of military jargon in the book, but it's certainly a more whimsical word than I expected to encounter in a military context.

Anyway, a quick Google search tells me that "repple-depple" refers to a replacement depot --- which is about as un-reppledy-deppledy a place as I'd imagined the word would refer to. Huh.

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: Wordiness, repple-depple

Wordiness: C2DE

Technically, it's not quite a word but it's not an acronym either. I was reading about the internal reorganisation of BBC News and "C2DE" kept popping up without explanatory notes.

Turns out it's UK jargon, springing from the terminology of that country's National Readership Survey, where grade C2 refers to skilled manual workers, D to semi- and unskilled manual workers and E to pensioners, widows, casual or lowest-grade earners (more details here, if you really must know). "C2DE" is shorthand for all these groups, i.e. roughly synonymous with "working class".

And I thought Singapore was bad with the obfuscating language!

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: wordiness, C2DE, working class

Wordiness: synecdoche

This is one of those words whose meanings I can't keep in my brain. I've looked it up a dozen times and it still eludes me, even though it's an extremely useful word.

Even now, writing this post, I need to go back and look it up again:

synecdoche n. a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man. (source: Dictionary.com)

I looked it up a few days ago because it was used on the extremely articulate Darren Barefoot's blog. I never thought I'd see "cereal box" and "synecdoche" in the same sentence, but there you go.

It's a good thing thing I'm not taking General Paper examinations anymore, because I would next have to figure out how to use "synecdoche" in a sentence to illustrate its meaning, and man, I'm still stumped on that one.

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: wordiness, synecdoche

Wordiness: caffree

Leafing through George Windsor Earl's The Eastern Seas (published in 1837), I came across a description of Singapore as home to people of many different races, including "Caffrees". The word made me think of "coffee", which made me think of someone from South America --- very logical, I know. At any rate, it was clearly some anachronistic term for a group stomped upon in the course of colonialism.

Which turned out to be not too far from the truth. The glossary of military terms at a Macquarie University Library website informs me that "caffree" (also "kaffir") refers to an African native brought to Ceylon as a slave or mercenary soldier by the Portuguese, Dutch or British. Not that you ever see any pictorial depictions of Africans in nineteenth-century Singapore (or, indeed, of Singapore today, barring a few players in the local soccer league), but it makes sense that where the empire went, there some slaves also followed.

Now I wonder if any caffrees ever settled in Asia ...

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: wordiness, Singapore, caffree

Wordiness: boma

In the course of writing about this beautiful South African getaway (the first time I've actually wanted to whip out up and go visit one of the places I'm paid to write about), I came across "boma". Wikipedia would have me believe a boma is a livestock enclosure of some kind, or a term used in eastern and southern Africa to also metaphorically refer to a government office. But seeing as the press material I was working with described the pleasurable experience of dining in an "open boma", I can only deduce that it's also a term for some kind of casual restaurant or cafe space. A quick Google search for "boma" in conjuunction with "South Africa" throws up any number of restraurant names, after all.

It does have a certain colonial ring to it: "We'll take our aperitifs in the boma, and then adjourn inside for dinner. Coming, Nigel?"

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: wordiness, boma

Wordiness: An introduction

I like words. I like learning new words. But I don't learn words so well when I learn them out of context, which is why trying to read through the dictionary never did help me very much.

Fortunately, since words are the tools of my trade, learning new ones is very much part of the job. The only problem is my Swiss-cheese memory's inability to retain more than a few of the good ones. Since I rely on the internet to keep track of so much of my life anyway (including my recent albeit late-to-the-party delight with Google Calendar), I figured I might as well use my blog to keep track of cool new words that I come across.

Ideally, there will be a Wordiness entry everyday. On the other hand, this is very much an experiment plus no one pays me to write this blog, so --- we'll see.

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: word, wordiness