{"id":242,"date":"2014-12-22T16:28:54","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T16:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.zonkdev.uk\/?p=242"},"modified":"2014-12-22T16:48:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T16:48:05","slug":"chosen-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/?p=242","title":{"rendered":"Chosen Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chosen<\/a>Chosen Words \u2013 Ivor Brown. Cover by Derek Birdsall, 1961.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chosen Words<\/em> is a collection of notes about various words in the English language from accidie<\/em> to zymurgy. <\/em>There is no particular theme linking the words, other than that they interested Ivor Brown.<\/p>\n

Brown, a Shakespearian scholar writing in the mid-twentieth century, clearly loved words. Chosen Words<\/em> is part of a series of eight books with titles that would have impressed the producers of the Carry On <\/em>films: A Word in Your Ear; I Give You My Word; No Idle Words. <\/em>You get the idea\u2026<\/p>\n

The notes, supported by quotations, touch on etymology, construction, and history; but Brown is particularly interested in how the words were used when he wrote his books. And of course, had he been able to think of enough punning titles – and been granted immortality – he could still have been writing them today. This is because the English language, unlike most Shakespearian scholars, has a remarkable capacity to evolve in a very short space of time.<\/p>\n

\"spam\"<\/a>The name for a newly coined word or phrase that is in the process of entering common use – but that has not yet been accepted into mainstream language – is neologism<\/em>. It can be a new use of an existing word (spam<\/em>), a combination of existing words (website<\/em>) or an acronym (scuba).<\/em><\/p>\n

Neologisms often come from popular literature: cyberspace<\/em>, McJob<\/em> or nymphet<\/em>. Sometimes the title of a book becomes the neologism, for example, Catch-22<\/em>.\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Occasionally, it\u2019s the author’s name; Orwellian<\/em> or Kafkaesque<\/em>. Another category is words derived from famous characters in literature: \u00a0quixotic\u00a0<\/i>or scrooge<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Donquixote\"<\/a>The last two examples demonstrate that no one, to my knowledge, has defined the amount of time a neologism has to exist before it is considered fully part of the language.<\/p>\n

But a word \u2013 in any language – isn’t just a sound or a handful of letters; what makes it interesting, what makes it a word, is that it has a meaning. And, if a neologism gives a name to, or describes, something that exists but that has no name or description, it must be considered a useful addition to the language.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s my own attempt to add something useful to the English language \u2013 relaxaction – <\/em> a word which, reassuringly, is not recognized by the Microsoft spellchecker. <\/em>Relaxaction, like spellchecker, is a classic, compound neologism. I use it to describe the act of relaxing the mind or body through some kind of physical action, as opposed to relaxation<\/em> which means doing as little as possible.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a concept most people recognize, although the action of choice differs from one person to another. For me it\u2019s chopping logs. Others have suggested mowing the lawn; having vigorous (or not so vigorous) sex; going for a run, singing in a choir or driving off-road on a remote dirt track in Oman.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0you\u2019d like to add your own favourite form of relaxaction to the list, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chosen Words \u2013 Ivor Brown. Cover by Derek Birdsall, 1961. Chosen Words is a collection of notes about various words in the English language from accidie to zymurgy. There is no particular theme linking the words, other than that they interested Ivor Brown. Brown, a Shakespearian scholar writing in the mid-twentieth century, clearly loved words. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-handbooks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}