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Oct 4, 2021
This week’s theme
Words related to writing

This week’s words
chosisme
pilcrow
paremiography
dithyramb
obelus

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Previous week’s theme
Hand to mouth
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

“Working” has a different meaning for writers. If you are a writer, writing doesn’t necessarily mean typing away on a keyboard or scribbling on a piece of paper. Writing happens when you are walking or taking a shower or pulling weeds in the backyard. Simply staring out a window also works. Once your writing is done, you just need to dump it on a sheet of paper or into a computer.

This week we’ll see a few words related to writing. How would you describe what you do in a way that clears misconceptions or puts it in a different light? Email us at words@wordsmith.org.

chosisme

PRONUNCIATION:
(sho-ZEEZ-muh)

MEANING:
noun: A literary style which focuses on description of objects, not on interpretation, plot, characterization, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French, from chose (thing), from Latin causa (case, thing). The idea is associated with the writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Earliest documented use: 1960s.

USAGE:
“‘How are things?’ someone asks the author at a party. That sets him off. How are things? You mean, in what way do things exist? How should I know? What, even, is a thing? I’d better write a book about it. And so he does: a book of short meditations on everyday objects, a contemporary exercise in happy chosisme.”
Steven Poole; How Are Things?; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 5, 2005.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth. -Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th US president (4 Oct 1822-1893)

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