Who Knows

Idioms can be wonderful or annoying often depending on if you understand them or not. Some frustrating moments of learning a new language are wondering why words aren't meaning what they usually do—and it turns out to be an idiom that might be hard to look up in a dictionary.

Today I used the phrase "who knows." And, as usual, I wondered if that was just a family or local thing and if people use it. But it turns out it is what I thought it was. Wiktionary has a definition for it.

 It’s awesome when one or two words can mean a large amount of words.

Awesome Word Spotting: Hurly-Burly

I've been reading a book by a British author—I'm not sure if that's why I saw this word in print recently! The word is "hurly-burly" and it was used to describe the world.

Book Review: A Cup of Comfort for Writers

I bought an "inspirational" book for writers for two dollars, put it away, eventually found it again, and then read the entire thing. Reading the entire book means it must be good. I don't often finish a book unless I really enjoy it or find all of it to be helpful or new information.

A Cup of Comfort for Writers is the book. The first two chapters/essays were hard to be motivated to read, but the essays following those struck me as helpful and even fun. Sure, every once and a while I ran into an essay that I didn't like as much, but I knew a following essay would be enjoyable. And I was right.

Being a type of person who loves words and writing feels like a unique thing--so, reading stories of people who are wired to love them was encouraging.

It feels good to see other people put words to your feelings, and show how this love for words plays out in different settings and lifestyles.

Another thing I think happened is that it made me a better writer. I've heard people say that to be a better writer, you should read a lot. Well, with this book, I was reading good writing. On top of that, it was my favorite type that I like to practice myself--nonfiction!

Every time I look for websites, magazines, and books on writing, most of it is on fiction writing. That seems to be the need. But I don't ever intend to write fiction. I see value in it but I also wish I could see more focus on nonfiction.

Awesome Word Spotting: Sizzle

Crazy, amusing, and fascinating words are on display in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea. It's actually a fun read for people like me who love words.

Reading that book reminds me to be on the look-out for underused words, the ones that seem to sparkle but aren't as famous or used as much these days.

Here are types of words to watch for:

• A word with meaning that can carry the weight of three or more words;
• Words with enjoyable or interesting connotations;
• Words with aesthetic value in a linguistic sense. To learn more, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson has a chapter or two on this.

I don't have the patience or interest to hunt for words in dictionaries, but I often end up grabbing a book to read. When I do that, I'll try to be attentive to any words that stand out. Then I'll share them here.

So, the one that I found today is "sizzle"! I haven't read or heard that word in a long time, yet I hear the sound of what it describes a few times a week. This word caught my eye in Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian, "... the sizzle of this world ..." (page 19).