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AWADmail Issue 679

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

Reports of English’s Demise in US Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
The Guardian
WebCite

How India Changed the English Language
BBC
WebCite

10 of the World’s Most Stunning Bookstores (I’d add Powell’s City of Books to this list)
CBC
WebCite

From: Joe Sabel (j_sabel yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--connate

Connate is a term used in geology for the water found in a rock formation. Connate water was in the sediment at or near the time of deposition. Meteoric water is the result of, well, weather and recharge. This is a particularly important concept just now in places where aquifers are being “mined”. The water is connate and will not be recharged whether droughts end or not.

From: Judy Fritsch (hnjfritsch gmail.com)
Subject: connate

And when I wasn’t sure if the word was spelled with an “i” or an “e”, I would write a thin “e” and put a dot over it. That was back in the days when we did cursive writing.

From: Mary Hazelton (maryhazelton gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--connate

I remember doing a similar thing in school. In a test with two consecutive questions about acid and alkaline and litmus paper and blue and pink, I said pink (or blue) for both, thus ensuring I got at least one right. However I actually thought that the teacher should not have given me a mark for either, as it was evident that I had no idea and was trying to buck the system. I was a bright student, just disinterested in science (and rote learning). Ingenuity? In my case plain dishonesty!

Your intro to the week’s words captivated me.

The school boy who wrote both T and F on his tests is the perfect image of how, for years, I tried to have it both ways with all the big questions of the Creed -- Was Jesus born of a Virgin? Did he rise from the dead? Is he coming back to rule an everlasting, world-wide kingdom? To all these I answered TF. Then one day in 1999 I wrote one letter, saying goodbye to the faith and the ministry. It wasn’t easy and, 16 years later I still struggle, but there is a certain comfort living, at last, unequivocally.

From: Duncan Howarth (DuncanHowarth aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--sorb

Good to see the quotation from John Gay, but by omitting to point out that it was his self-scripted epitaph you run the danger that readers will not understand the full point of his words.

From: M Henri Day (mhenriday gmail.com)
Subject: Re: fardel

The locus classicus must be in Hamlet’s soliloquy:

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

I’m so friendly -- at parties, I’m great!
Niceness runs in my genes; it’s a trait.
I’m a sociable, mellow,
Agreeable fellow.
Just call me connately connate.

When a man sees a film for adults
He achieves scientific results
Through the ocular orbs
His amygdala sorbs
All the photons in which he exults.

There was an old Scotsman named Campbell
Who took a young lass for a ramble
He had some desire
And her bum was on fire
When she went to lie back on a bramble.

I’m wondering whether this bard’ll
be able to do it. How hard’ll
a limerick be?
Uh oh! Now I see
there’s a dearth of words rhyming with fardel!

When you set out to maunder,
Take heed where you might wander,
Or else you could amble,
Get lost in your ramble,
And find yourself out yonder.

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Puns on the Words of the Week

In a surprisingly good mood, the connate his final meal.

“I can really hold my ouzo,” said Sorba the Greek.

“You found the patient on a different floor? I didn’t know he was ramble-atory!”

“How fardel I can set down this TV?” gasped the delivery boy.

“I maunder the impression that we’re lost,” said Lewis to Clark.