House of the Seven Gables

12 Sep 2023 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy, vocabulary Tags:

Words, words, words. The English language is filled with the most beautiful words, so many of which are seldom used in modern times. Case in point: I just finished reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. On almost every page there was a word I did not know. So naturally I wrote down the sords on my papers for future defining. At about page 90, I realized I should indicate the page number as well, so after defining I could go back and reread the sentence again, this time with better comprehension.

Here is the original paper:

Here are the words. How many do you know?

traditionary

presentment

propinquity

metes

invidious

averment

punctilious

impalpable

obeisance

pendent

immitable

vicissitude

latterly

obviate

fain

matutinal

escritoire

hardihood

festoon

galvanic

emoulment

tremulous

recondite

importunity

contemptuous

contumaciously

pettish

pertinacious (all five vowels!)

subtile

festile

apothegm

asperity

meed

sybarite

unctuous

effulgence

Ixion

immitigable

chary

inveteracy

irrefragably (copied down this word twice)

continguity

hymettus

gallinaceous

apposite

scapegrace

How many pairs of words can You alliterate?

13 Jul 2023 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy, Workshops Tags:

Lately, professional development workshops have included alliterations in the descriptions of the events. Is there a connection between using alliteration and dumbing down?

  • courageous conversation
  • safe space
  • promising practice

Can you think of any others?

New Year, New Name, Same Me!

13 Sep 2022 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy Tags:

And we’re off!

From now on, you may refer to me, Charles Tanenbaum Bender, by my new favorite anagram name: Entranced Herbal Sunbeam!

Thank you anagram maker by Username|Generator.

Spotify Wikipedia Whatnow?

03 Aug 2021 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy Tags:

I installed the desktop version of Spotify, and then decided to uninstall it. While searching for additional Spotify files to move to the trash, I came upon this english_wikipedia.txt file:

Upon further investigation, the file was located in a Google Chrome data subfolder:

I opened the text file. It was 30,000 words, each word on its own line, comprising over 600 pages of text:

The words start off simple — the, of, and, in — and by page 600 are completely obscure and random.

 

I copied the text and pasted it into Word to remove the paragraph breaks.

I will do more research into this list.

Could it be every word from every wikipedia article I ever read using the Chrome browser?

Or maybe it is every single word in the English language?*

Why was it sorted into this particular order?

What other secrets can be gleaned from this 30,000-word precious list?

Download the reformated wikipedia word list in pdf format

* “If we want to talk about how many words there are in English, there are three key numbers to remember: more than a million total words, about 170,000 words in current use, and 20,000-30,000 words used by each individual person.” from englishlive.ef.com

Maybe it is every word I ever said, Loki-style?

The Cricket in Times Square, adapted

21 Dec 2018 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in 993Q, bulletin board, literacy Tags:

The Cricket in Times Square was a good novel, with some dated vocabulary, unfortunately. Here is an adapted bulletin board.

Logophilia

19 Jul 2018 1 Comment

by CharlesB in literacy Tags:

I like words, really like them, especially the unusual ones that seldom find their way into conversation, but may be found on better writers’ pages everywhere. To me, nothing is more enjoyable than reading a novel and copying down the words I do not know, so I can look them up later. That is how I discovered raillery, soi-disant, and badinage.

Anywho, here is a little website, the author of which defines interesting words. I am not sure why this dictionary is damned.

 

Library, part I

05 Jun 2018 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in library, literacy Tags: ,

I visited a school with a library (which is the exception, not the rule…the library, that is, not my visitation. I peruse school libraries if I see them). In the bookcase closest to the door was this collection of Chicken Soup for the… books. Maybe there was a sale by the publisher?

Poem, by DDD

19 Jun 2017 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in art, literacy Tags:

Dear darling daughter Isabelle wrote this poem (whether for a class or no, I don’t know). What grade do you think she is in?

Spaces

30 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy, mashup Tags:

I went to the School Tech Summit yesterday. The keynote speaker is in charge of all the Maker Faires (part steampunk, part circus, part garage workshop) that have been cropping up all over the world. Anyway, he spent the entire hour talking about makerspaces, and making, and make this make that. Etc.

So I thought of other places, that will now be called spaces:

  • tinkerspace
  • thinkerspace
  • learnerspace
  • creatorspace
  • inventorspace
  • gadgetspace
  • widgetspace
  • hackerspace
  • coderspace
  • gamerspace
  • playerspace
  • planterspace
  • craftyspace
  • handyspace
  • doerspace (“doo-er”)
  • diyerspace (“dee-eye-wire”)
  • bakerspace
  • make-and-takerspace
  • give-and-takerspace