Tag Archives: new words

Mondegreens, Mandela Effect and Mungo

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Just saw this photo when looking for photos and it reminded me I’d seen a Red Admiral basking in a morning sunbeam on the end wall of the bungalow next door – just like this Peacock earlier in the year.

It’s just turned 10am and I have survived without any major disasters or ludicrous occurrences. I did have a parcel that resisted my efforts at opening it, but a big knife and  profanity soon solved that. It was one of those old-fashioned padded envelopes with a paper outer skin and a padding comprised of what I would describe as “shoddy”. However, I may be misusing the term. I use it for shredded waste, but when I look it up, it is more properly used for the cloth made from the shredded waste. It’s an interesting subject on its own, being an early example of recycling – rags being gathered, sorted and once again, being used to make clothing.

As for my misuse of the term – it’s vocabulary I learned from family members who used to work in the textile trade in the north, and I may well have been inaccurate in my learning. A bit like Mondegreens and the Mandela Effect.

Having said that, I’m doubtful that the Mandela Effect really exists. A lot of it seems to be the internet building something up and turning it into a new thing to write books about. Just because people with bad memories can get together on the internet to pool their faulty memories, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a whole science of collective misremembering. It’s just how we are.

I can explain a number of the quotes that I supposedly remember badly. I’m actually being 100% accurate in quoting published misquotes. They are easy to remember compared to a fleeting moment in a film. It’s not a science of shared mistakes – it’s the dissemination of misinformation by modern media. I’ve watched Casablanca once, I think. Or maybe seen parts of it several times. I’m not a film buff and I don’t find it that easy concentrating on a whole film when there are books around and cups of tea to make. But I’ve seen the misquote “Play it again, Sam.” so many times it has taken root. Same for “Luke, I am your father.”

Christmas is coming

As for misremembered deaths – I agree I can’t tell you when Neil Armstrong died, but if I’m honest, I thought he was still alive. Celebrity deaths are so easy to miss or forget. I’m not one of the people who thought Nelson Mandela died in prison, because I noticed him being President of post-apartheid South Africa, and I don’t remember Mother Theresa being made a saint whilst she was still alive because I know that doesn’t happen. You have to die first. It’s a fairly strict requirement, like the Pope being Catholic. Churches are very keen on detail. That’s not a scientific phenomenon, it’s the coagulation of ignorance.

However, I digress. I’ve just been having brunch (an omlette made of leftovers and odd bits) when a parakeet landed on the bird feeders. Unfortunately, it couldn’t get much from the squirrel-proof feeders so it may not come back. I keep meaning to keep a camera by the back window . . .

And the title – mungo is a lower quality version of shoddy. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

St Mungo is also the patron Saint of Glasgow, and the German for Mongoose.

Coffee Cup (from six years ago). I don’t get out6 much.

 

Reality Check and New Words

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After blogging last night, I looked at my list of Haibun and Tanka Prose that are “ready” for submission. I may have been over-optimistic in that assessment. I read the first one of nine and was immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of trepidation. Of the nine I thought were ready it turns out that several of them aren’t as good as I thought they were when I “finished” them. A couple more aren’t actually finished (I normally write the prose using a working title and then think “I’ll write the haiku later”). So that means I still have poems to write. And then, even more annoying, two of them are almost the same. Four out of nine are ready. the other five are going to need work, and that work is going to have to be done in the next two weeks. It’s not quite the leisurely month I was planning.

Still, as we all know, I only work under pressure. Julia says I only work under protest, which is also pretty accurate. I meant to be a dilettante with private means but life didn’t get the message.

Apples 

I just looked it up to make sure I was using it correctly, and found a search listed as “What does dilettante mean in old terms?” Old terms? From that question it’s almost as if the enquirer thinks it’s one of those new words that crop up every year, like . . .

(Googles “List of New Words”)

. . .abrogate. I wasn’t expecting that on a list of new words for 2023. Or gaffe, inchoate or omphaloskepsis (a lack of motivation to move, exert oneself or change – guess why I decided to add this one.). This is not what I was expecting. These are, I feel, only a list of new words if you are John Milton.

Apple Press

It seems that the modern, pejorative sense of dilettante only came into use in the late 18th Century. Modern? late 18th Century? Who is deciding on these definitions?

Fortunately I then found a proper list. Cakeage – a fee charged at an eating establishment for bringing in your own cake. Obviously comes from corkage. I presume it mainly applies to birthday cakes at celebrations. Cakeism – a belief that you can have your cake and eat it. Pinkwashing – making it look like you are an ally of the LGBTQ+ community to gain credibility – joining whitewashing, greenwashing and sportswashing. It’s also a term that has been used since 2002 to describe companies who use the breast cancer pink ribbon to disguise their activities.

It is, as I’ve said before, interesting where the internet takes you.

Apple Juice. Notice the clue in the picture.

Pictures are from September 2015. Guess what we were doing.

Words . . .

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I’ve been learning new words this week. The best was logorrhoea, from Derrick. It sounds worse than it is and merely means wordiness or “extreme loquacity”. I would have said sesquipedalian myself, had I been in sophisticated mood. Or motormouth if I had been in my normal mode, though the meanings are slightly different. The advantage of sesquipedalian is that I can spell it. The advantage of logorrhoea is to be found in my rhyming dictionary. There is , literally, an embarrassment of riches to be found in there (though I had already managed the less tasteful ones without the help of the dictionary). My only reservation is that the dictionary omits pyorrhoea. It does, however, include pizzeria Tanzania and Ikea.  When I finally get round to it that’s going to be a heck of a Limerick . . .

I also learned prosimetrum,  It’s a word that is so little used that my spell checker doesn’t recognise it. It’s a piece of writing that combines prose and poetry. Yes, I was reading about haibun in an attempt to become a better writer of them. More specifically, prosimetrum is a form where the verse dominates. The form where prose dominates is versiprose. This seems the wrong way round to me, but that’s what Wikipedia says and I can’t find anything to contradict it, mainly because I can’t find anything when I search for versiprose. I’m suspicious that someone is just making words up.

You have to wonder how much knowledge is necessary before you can start to write something. As I’ve shown, I can write prosimetrum without knowing what it is. I can, after all, not explain the niceties of the Otto Cycle, but I have been successfully driving cars for the last 45 years.