What a turnaround! Just like what happened with the letter B, the letter D has been a completely different reading experience. I have a few theories about why:First, it’s a much shorter section, so visually it looks as if my pace has increased. Second, my pace has actually increased- for some reason D-words just flow quicker. Third, there are more interesting words. De-words were interesting because of the negating prefix. Let’s just say those kinds of words have a way of commanding one’s attention.
Given that the next few letters are all under 75 pages, I am counting on making some serious progress. I’ve been averaging at least two pages a day. I don’t know if I can expect to finish D by the end of September but it should definitely be done by early October. My long range goal for the end of 2014 is to finish the letter G. I think that is a very attainable goal and will put me into the middle third of the dictionary. That still leaves an awful lot if I am to finish this darn book by the end of 2015 but I haven’t officially set that goal for myself yet.
Interesting words:
CRWTH- Leave it to the Welsh to come up with words that use no vowels whatsoever. I am totally filing this one away for later use in Scrabble. It may only be worth 13 points on its own, but boy could this one come in handy!
CUDDLE- Origin unknown. How does this keep happening? If it were weird words that nobody uses I could understand but these common words with no known origin are starting to irritate me. Maybe English is 10% made up.
CULTURE/CULTURED- Words like this are so relative. Just because you know or appreciate something doesn’t make you any better than anyone else. I enjoy intellectual pursuits but I also understand that being a brainiac only gets you so far if you lack any practical skills. Elitists and snobs like words like this to put other hardworking people down. There are uneducated people and there are willfully ignorant people. Let’s stop assuming they are one and the same.
CURBSTONE- “Not having the benefit of training or experience.” That’s the definition and it fits me so well in regards to my movie review and book review pages. The cynic in me wants to go all Dead Poets Society and ask why someone who self-teaches through their own independent research shouldn’t be taken as seriously as some ivory tower snob from the movie or book critics institution. But let’s be honest, I know a lot about movies but I’m just doing this for fun.
CURMUDGEON- Another word of unknown origin. This one surprised me. I would have though it comes from some kind Old English, Germanic, or Scandinavian word. But no, it just showed up one day. Go figure.
CUSHY- As in “I’ve got a cushy job.” The word has its roots in a Hindi term. That’s pretty fantastic to me. Words from Latin, Greek, and Germanic origins are to be expected, so I am always happy to see the occasional word that comes from so distant origin point.
CUT-AND-PASTE- We use this term almost exclusively in terms of computers now but it goes all the way back to 1953. You know, when they actually had to cut and paste things. Teenagers probably cannot comprehend this concept.
CUTE- I never knew that it was short for ‘acute.’ The definitions only barely connect anymore but I can see where it branched off. Somebody probably just felt like saving a syllable and it took off.
DAIQUIRI- The name for this tasty beverage comes from a beach in Cuba.
DARWINISM- This term is celebrating 150 years in popular use this year. Human beings have been working against it ever since. You’ll have to ask me why.
D DAY- While we use this term to refer to the storming of Normandy in World War II, the term was used by the military for any day on which a military operation would occur.
DEADLINE- The original definition for this word is fascinating. It was a line drawn around the perimeter of a prison and you got shot if you crossed it. Wow.
DEBT- The first definition is one word- sin. You can make the argument that this definition or debt is metaphorical in that Jesus paid our debt of sin. Or you can take it a step further with the understanding that the Bible also says that being in debt makes you a slave, so debt itself is sinful. Both ways of looking at it are powerful.
DECIMATE- We know this to mean an instance of mass destruction but its original definition was the indiscriminate killing of every tenth person. That’s pretty chilling. I wonder which conquering nation(s) used that tactic.
DELVE- Now that I know what it truly means, I think that a number of people misuse this word. If you are giving something thorough care and research, you are indeed delving. Anything less than that is basically just dabbling in your subject matter of choice.
DENIM- This common fabric’s name is actually the Anglicized abbreviation of serge de Nîmes, or fabric of Nîmes. This city in France was known for its textile industry and created the fabric we now take for granted.
DERVISH- As in a whirling dervish. That term probably isn’t politically correct anymore because a dervish is a member or a Muslim religious sect that has devotional exercises, whereby they seem to flail themselves into a trance. I’m sure the PC police will catch up with this one in time.
DESEGREGATE- This word is now 70 years old per MW’s researchers.
DESKTOP PUBLISHING- This word is actually older than I thought it was. In fact, it is as old as I am- 30.
DEUTERANOPIA- It’s the technical term for red-green color blindness. I’ve known a couple of people who have this condition but I only now know the official medical terminology for it.
DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE- I find it hard to believe that this delicious dessert is only just over 100 years old. MW tracks the term back to 1905. Perhaps the food item itself is older and simply went by a different name before that.
DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION- I am curious how many libraries still use this to sort their books. I know that my college library did not but my county library system of choice seems to still use it. Either way, the term is now 90 years old.
DEW POINT- For so many years I never understood the nightly news meteorologist’s awkward explanations of what a dew point is. Now I get it. It’s just the temperature at which the humidity in the air condenses on the grass under the given atmospheric pressure conditions. It’s confusing because it fluctuates so often but now I understand that it operates as a function of temperature and pressure just like snow.
DIABETES- This word always makes me think of those Wilford Brimley commercials for Liberty Medical in which he seems to have no control over the volume of his voice. Interestingly though, the term’s Greek roots speak to the position of the legs while walking. There are two types of diabetes. Look them up to find out the differences between them.
Page Count: 358/1600 (22.38%)
Countdown to the Letter E: 41 pages
