Don’t let the apparent letter progress fool you. My pace has slacked significantly. I only made it about halfway through the letter K by the end of April. That’s not too bad but I hoped for better. April’s pace has been even worse and with the start of the NHL playoffs eminent, I don’t see it getting much better. I’m going to try my darndest to finish L by the end of April.Interesting words of the month:
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGAUAGES- This has fascinated me for several years. It is also quite the confounding subject. It is astounding to think that half of the world’s population speaks in languages that share a common root. Uncovering that common root is difficult to process and, I believe, requires a few leaps of faith. While reading the dictionary, I have seen MW try to link languages in strange ways. If a word originates from Old English, sometimes MW lists similarities in Old High German and Latin. The trouble is that neither of the supposedly similar words look nothing like each other, seemingly nixing that attempt at tracing them back to the theorized Indo-European language. This is a subject that I can see myself looking deeper into once Project Bookshelf is complete.
IN SITU- This makes my list of interesting words/phrases this month because it is the name of one of our vendors. One of the phrase’s meanings is “in position,” which makes sense because our vendor calibrates equipment to ensure proper readings.
INTERROBANG- This word is the term for a most unusual typographical symbol: ‽ It is the fusion of a question mark and an exclamation point. Created in the 1960s, it was meant to simplify exclamatory questions so writers didn’t have to use two symbols and fret over which one to put first. Like a lot of things from the 60s, the interrobang didn’t have staying power its creator may have hoped for.
IRREGARDLESS- Don’t ever let anyone tell you that this is not a word. It is a word. MW speculates that it is a fusion of ‘irrespective’ and ‘regardless.’ Either way, the word means ‘regardless,’ so you probably still shouldn’t use it.
IS- MW doesn’t even give this word a formal definition. It provides conjugational context as the third-person singular form of ‘be.’ So maybe we should stop picking on Bill Clinton for his “that depends on what your definition of is… is” comment from the Monica Lewinsky trial. Or not. Is is what it is. There are no other definitions, Bubba.
JESUS- I like MW’s definition: “The Jewish religious teacher whose life, death, and resurrection as reported by the Evangelists are the basis of the Christian message of salvation.” There’s something very simple but elegant about that phrasing. It strikes me as completely free of bias.
JEWISH CALENDAR and JULIAN CALENDAR- Calendar systems have been intriguing to me for some time. Though time does exist, man created the way we measure it. It’s also intriguing to me the origins behinds some of the major calendar systems. The Jewish calendar begins with the creation of Adam, not the creation of the universe. The Julian calendar was created to fix the Roman calendar but it was eventually replaced by the Gregorian calendar.
JUNGLE GYM- This term was once trademarked. I never knew that. I remember a multi-level metal jungle gym at a nearby park when I was growing up. That thing was amazing because there were endless routes up and through it. The original jungle gym format is probably banned now because it’s not safe enough.
KARAOKE- My dictionary dates the term to 1982 but MW online goes back to 1979. Still though, I’m surprised at how young the technology is. That just goes to show you how spoiled I was to be a lae-80s/early 90s kid. And yes, I have performed karaoke once. I did well.
Page Count: 678.5/1600 (42.41%)
Countdown to the Letter L: 8 pages
