Old Words and Old Meanings

For someone who speaks so little, I sure like words. I like to learn about the history of words. Sometimes it adds to their richness. Other times its just amusing. I found a fun webpage that lists words that have changed meaning over time. Here are some common words along with their old meanings.

• Abandon--subdue or subjugate
• Accent--to sing
• Actual--pertaining to an action
• Afford--to go forward
• Amuse--to distract for the purpose of misleading
• Balderdash--a frothy liquid
• Basement--toilet
• Bellboy--the boy who rang a ship's bell. 
• Brave--described a showy or gaudy person
• Coil--a noisy disturbance
• Disclose--to open a hatch
• Emphasis--appearance
• Evil--uppity
• Forehead--An expression easily conveyed by the face
• Girl--a young person of either sex
• Harlot--a vagabond or beggar
• Heartburn--referred to someone full of hatred
• Hilarity--simple cheerfulness or calm joy. 
• Infant--not able to speak
• Keister--a suitcase or satchel
• Last--highest, utmost

Of course, most words probably have old meanings, and if someone used those words intending to communicate the old meaning, we would be utterly baffled. Well, English is baffling anyway. Almost as baffling as Chinese. But that's another story. 

Just a Few Thoughts

The revision and editing process for my novel is turning out to be more laborious than I bargained for. First I needed to fix the plot--streamline it, make sure all the conflicts came to a conclusion of sorts. It involved a lot of index cards (I summarized each scene on a card so I could get perspective on the overall story), a hand sore from writing, and quite a bit of glaring at my computer screen wishing the story would fix itself. Eventually, though, I got that done.

Now I'm on to more intricate work which, I must admit, tests my patience. I constantly have to look up words to make sure I used them correctly, switch words around, smooth out clunky sentences, fix the rhythm of individual scenes and paragraphs. I discovered that in the rough draft of my manuscript, the word "just" occurs nearly four hundred times. That's four hundred "just"s out of a total of roughly 98,000 words. I just justed myself crazy! I also used the word "obviously" 20 times, which I think is obviously just too much.

So I slog through my novel, one paragraph at a time, analyzing, comparing, rewriting, second guessing myself, wishing I had more patience, and trying to convince myself that it will never be perfect.

I've learned a lot about my writing habits and where I need to improve (I keep hearing the voice of my eighth grade English teacher in my head. She composed a dirge for "dead" verbs that she didn't want us to use in our writing.) I'm also losing patience because reading through my novel makes me itch to write the rest of the story. I'm planning a series of at least four books featuring the same main character. But it's going to be so much work! Whine. Whine. Whine.

While I muddle through the revision process, I eagerly await feedback from my beta readers, and I hope they don't point out anything super major that requires a total remodel of my manuscript. My goal was to get this beasty done by the end of October, but now I'm thinking I may have to push my deadline back a little. It'll definitely be done by the end of the year, even if it means I have to self-publish a wreck of a book.

Well, we'll see how things go.

That's it for today's ramble. I'm not sure if anything I just wrote has a point to it.

Name that Color!

The visible spectrum of light makes the world beautiful, and word-lovers work hard to give every shade a unique name. Every wander through the paint aisle just to giggle at the ridiculous names of colors? Me neither. But now that the thought occurs to me...haha. Okay, I don't have time for that, but I did have time to browse through my book,  The Bibliophile's Dictionary and discover some awesome color words. 

• argent--silver
• carmine--red, purplish-red, or crimson
• cerise--bright red, cherry red. French for cherry. (My car's name is currently Cherry. Do you think I should change it to Cerise?)
• glaucous--dull or pale, grayish-, bluish-, or yellowish-green.
• heliotrope--reddish purple
• madder--bright red, reddish-purple, crimson.
• roseate--rose-colored. Now you can tell people to take off their roseate glasses. 
• rufous--brownish-red, rust-colored
• subfusc--a somber, dark, or dusky color. 
• titian--reddish yellow or auburn
• verdure--the lush, vibrant green of flourishing vegetation 
• viridescent--green or slightly green.

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain...yeah, we're going to have to come up with a longer mnemonic.