I ran across this article the other day about an albino bottlenose dolphin in Lake Calcasieu, Louisiana. The rest of the members of it's pod are normal colored. He's being dubbed Pinky. Yeah, that's original. I think that 'Incarnadine' would be more befitting. I mean, let's get a little more creative here. Case in point, Blue's Clues, she's named Blue, wow that's a shocker. It is a little deeper meaning seeing as how she's a hound, 'Ol Blue, but still, wouldn't Azure have been a bit more educational? I mean, she has a pinkish friend named Magenta. Kids will pick up on anything. You teach them about squares, circles & dodecahedrons, they'll find those tricky dodecahedrons! But I digress, all in favor of Incarnadine, the albino bottle-nose dolphin, raise their hand. incarnadine • \in-KAHR-nuh-dyne\• adjective - 1 : having the pinkish color of flesh
- *2 : red; especially : bloodred
Example Sentence:
"Tavel [wine] … is noted for its assertive fruit and magnificent rich and brilliant incarnadine color." (Vick Knight Jr., Press Enterprise [Riverside, CA], August 11, 1999) Did you know?
"Carn-" is the Latin root for "flesh," and "incarnates" is Latin for "flesh-colored." English speakers picked up the "pinkish" sense of "incarnadine" back in the late 1500s. Since then, the adjective has come to refer to the dark red color of freshly cut, fleshy meat as well as to the pinkish color of the outer skin of some humans. The word can be used as a verb, too, meaning "to redden." Shakespeare used it that way in Macbeth: “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”
** word of the day thanks to merriam-webster online **
Awkward
- Pronunciation: \ˈȯ-kwərd\
- Function: adjective
- Etymology:
- Middle English awkeward in the wrong direction, from awke turned the wrong way, from Old Norse ǫfugr; akin to Old High German abuh turned the wrong way
- Date: 1530
1obsolete : perverse
2archaic : unfavorable , adverse
3 a: lacking dexterity or skill (as in the use of hands) --awkward with a needle and thread-- b: showing the result of a lack of expertness -- awkward pictures --
4 a: lacking ease or grace (as of movement or expression) --awkward writing--b: lacking the right proportions, size, or harmony of parts : ungainly --awkward design--
5 a: lacking social grace and assurance awkward newcomer> b: causing embarrassment awkward moment>
6: not easy to handle or deal with : requiring great skill, ingenuity, or care awkward load-- awkward diplomatic situation--
Ok, I picked this word for a couple of reasons. One: I was spelling this the other day and it dawned on me how weird the spelling of this word is. I went to the dictionary (online, my hard copy is getting dusty. :-( Really? A-w-k-w-a-r-d. Hmmm. I was right, much to my chagrin. Not that I wanted to be wrong, it just 'felt' wrong. Two "w's" in one word? It would be ideal for Hangman . Although if someone guessed "w" then it's all downhill from there. Two: Try explaining "why" to a six year old. The word came up in a conversation, and Mairyn asked,
"What does awkward mean?"
And so I told her. And then she asked how it is spelled.
"That *pause* is wrong, Mommy. It can't be like that."
We wrote it down, looked it up and heard it pronounced online (that is something our paper version can't do. Yet. ;-) She finally conceded that this was, in fact, really a word. Thank you, Mairyn. I think. This word is, in more ways than one, awkward. Ha!
**P.S. I'd like to know on what accent they base the pronunciation of a word. I mean, not everyone in the U.S. says, "Cuba" the same. (sorry, just saw 'JFK', I still giggle a bit when I hear "cuber". ha!) I guess someone knows. Potato, Potato, Tomato, Tomato.
I don't have a single word for this week, more like a word thought. Here we have two words: dejected and rejected. I'm no English major (ask my SIL or Sara for that kind of info), but don't they have the same root? This "ject", what does it mean? I looked it up in the dictionary (online) and in Wikipedia. Nada. De- and re- are prefixes to this odd word "ject". There is reassigned, inappropriate, return, reverse, demote, promote, all of these words that can have the front part chopped off and still have a meaning. Why not these two little odd semantical abberations? I guess they would have the opposite meaning of their first incarnation.
"Gosh, I'm sure feeling jected! I could jump for joy!"
or
"He jected me! He jected me! We're going to the dance together!"
You see, as I mentioned before, I'm no genius of the English language, but this only seems to make sense. Although, English never does make much sense. Looking at it from a non-English speakers point of view, it is a dang hard language! I mean, take these words for instance: fish and phone. Why oh why do they make the same beginning sound but have different letters? I could pull out a dozen different examples, but then we would both be bored! Am I right? So, to wrap up this wordy Wednesday, the English language makes no sense, but gosh I'm glad I speak it!!
