academic writing – Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Looming

This week I had planned for “portent,” but I see that I covered that term in 2020, just before the last national election. I guess like many of you I’m concerned, looking for portents. Whatever this year’s outcome, there are storm-clouds looming on the national horizon.

As a verb, our word traces its first recorded use to the 17th Century. Its etymology remains unclear, with The OED fact-sheet noting that it might be of Germanic origin. I enjoy words like that; in fact, it suits the mysterious sense of our word quite well.

We might use “loom” today to mean to tower over, threateningly, someone or something. While that usage retains a great deal of power, the word can also mean to appear indistinctly in the distance, the way a storm cloud might an hour or so before we run for cover. Depending upon the situation, we might employ “tower over” or “threaten” as synonyms.

Here’s a curious note: usage of our word enjoyed a steady rise in use since it appeared. Usage peaked about 1930, which by mid-decade Churchill called “The Locust Years”: these years were replete with looming troubles. Postwar, frequency of “looming” declined, bottoming out about 1990 and the beginning to increase. Do journalists like the word enough to put it back into circulation? Or do events of large consequence: political dysfunction, climate change, looming trillionaires, artificial intelligence, and pandemic drive the rise?

We all have a front-row seat, like Rockwell Kent’s landlubber on the dock from the illustration.

Whatever happens in a week, I wish you all well. Right now, it seems to me that small gestures of civility and open inquiry matter more than ever. It is a melodramatic thing to say to young people, but I remind my students every semester that I see our modern university system as a shield against a New Dark Age. Perhaps the shield has gotten battered by all the slurs hurled against higher education, but it remains one of the only shields I trust.

So if you have word or metaphor that might serve well in this season of loomings, send them to me at jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu or by leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image: Rockwell Kent, “Loomings” from the first chapter of Melville’s Moby Dick.

Word of the Week! Dastardly

Thanks to Josh Wroniewicz, Director, Business Office at our Campus Business Services, for this nomination. In election season, we usually have major candidates calling each other names. “Dastardly” would be a fine, if rather quaint, bit of mud to sling at one’s opponent.

Younger Boomers and older Xers will recall Dick Dastardly, a mustachio-twirling villain of the silent-movie sort, who appeared in a few Saturday-morning cartoons from the late 1960s onward. He says things such as “curses! Foiled again!” before being flattened like a pancake or blown up by one of his own traps.

Today I find the cartoons cringeworthy, save for the infectious laugh of Dastardly’s dog, Muttley (think of him as The Anti-Snoopy). No, I cannot resist giving you a link to a short video of Dick’s and Muttley’s “best” moments. Despite this cornball association, the word retains a good deal of its antique power. Dick certainly fits a few obsolete meanings of our word, as given in the OED entry. He’s dull and stupid, at times, and when he hatches his hare-brained schemes, he usually acts in secret. Thus we get at a certain type of evil: done not openly but from under cover. This type of evil would not work with malevolent,” “sinister,” “diabolical,” or other terms for active, even gleeful, doers of evil.

The most common definition still in use would be “showing mean or despicable cowardice.” One OED example illustrates this nuance well, “The slanders of an avowed antagonist are seldom so mean and dastardly as those of a traitor.” The word comes from the 15th Century “dastard,” no longer used but of an interesting and possibly English origin.

That gives us a word far more inscrutable than the modern villain who takes its name.

The blog will continue all year, so send in useful words or metaphors, by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. You are invited to write a guest post as well.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Metaphors of the Month! Nautical Terms

Strolling through the Second Floor of Boatwright Library the other day, I spotted some works on display from our Rare-Books collection. Since I have an unfathomable interest in nautical words, I turned a weather eye toward that case of treasures.

It must the the lore of sea faring that hooks me. I’m decidedly not a “water person,” my biggest adventures in a boat involves paddling a 12′ kayak in the salt marshes of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. When I see the line of breakers meaning the bay or ocean, I pivot back and head for home. So I’m an armchair swab, I suppose. Since “swab,” being the verb for mopping up a deck, can also mean “sailor,” we have our first October metaphor.

The image snapped by me comes from Jessica Spring’s book Fathoming, printed in a special 2015 edition with a set of tobacco cards (itself an old-timey collectible). The cards pictured feature three metaphors clearly from sailing or ships: “three sheets to the wind,” “loose cannon,” and “in the same boat.” I will leave it up to the reader to recall times they or someone they know embodied any of those phrases.

Yet “Rummage Sale” proved new to me. The description reads “from the French arrumage, to load a cargo ship. Damaged cargo was sold as arrumage, or rummage.” We don’t say “rummage sale” too often these days, with land lubbers’ “flea markets,” or in the UK, motorists’ “boot sales” taking their place.

Other nautical metaphors can be found all around us. Think of how frequently “anchor” works as an active verb or strategically employed noun.

Some have become bit dated, like “steamer trunk”: I suspect that few of us travel with them, today. Half a century ago, however, college students often toted one to the dorm. There it then served as a bench (if sturdy enough), a table, or an extra closet to hold extra linens, maybe a secret bottle to let said student and friends get three sheets to the wind.

When bad weather looms, I say “batten down the hatches,” though I did not know what a “batten” was until I restored some 150 year-old board-and-batten doors from a farmhouse. Battens are the nailed-down cross boards that hold the door together. If someone says “pipe down,” they are metaphorically sounding a bosun’s whistle, while you probably learned the ropes without ever climbing a ship’s rigging. And I do tell employees that for some events, we need all hands on deck.

You can amuse yourself for a long time looking over the nautical terms that NOAA describes in a blog post. You may even find some of these terms slipping into harbor in academic prose. Meanwhile, don’t fall into the doldrums before the next post. Let NOAA’s post and Captain Google tide you over. I’ll weigh anchor now, so until next time, fair winds and smooth sailing.

Send in useful words or metaphors, by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Word of the Week! Ennui

Some time back, I picked up a copy of Thomas Jefferson: Travels, Anthony Brandt’s edited collection of Jefferson’s correspondence from 1784-1789, his years working in Paris. I find the “American Sphinx,” to use Joseph Ellis’ term, endlessly fascinating in all his complexities, obscurities, and patent hypocrisy. In some ways, his is the story of the state of Virginia, even the entire South. Partly my interest stems from Deism, a spiritual path I share with the Founding Father, partly the long shadow cast by my alma mater, The University of Virginia.

Jefferson, with his many flaws, lacked one: idleness. That brings us to our word, one he saw as the emotional outcome of doing nothing. Here, in a letter to Martha Jefferson from 1787, “guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is alway happy. . . .it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is. . .” In an earlier letter from the same month, he finds the cause of such poison to be “want of industry which I had begun to fear would be the rock on which you would split.”

Ennui, as befits Jefferson’s experience, come to us from French. In its modern sense, it only dates to 1758, during Jefferson’s own lifetime. Thus, we have a ‘Modern Problem”! On the other hand, The OED dates an older sense to the 13th century, meaning “weariness.” Often the word “annoy” got employed in the same sense.

The modern loan word implies an annoyance or torpor of the soul, a lassitude. it’s that waiting-for-Godot state of mind. I’ve covered the words malaise and doldrum here before. They both can be used as near synonyms for our week’s word.

I fear we turn to dopamine-dispensers called smart phones and social media for quick bandages to slap over ennui, when instead we might find uses for our time that leave us with something tangible. If you experience ennui, get some exercise. Do some useful work. Improve your mind (and yes, you can find such content via a phone). As Jefferson advises Martha, “it is wonderful how much can be done, if we are always doing.”

Spend your time well! Send us a word or metaphor and I will feature it here. Let me know by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below. Also let us know if you would like to write a guest column.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image Source: Ennui by Robert Seymour, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Word of the Week! Patois

I have quite a pile of ideas from readers currently. Thank you! We will begin to work through the backlog soon, but first, student Leo Barnes has a really strong entry on a loan-word from French that I often hear in academic settings.

In terms of definition, we have “regional dialect” from The OED entry. Now I’ll turn things over to Leo:

The term ‘patois’ refers to the language of the common people of a region. A patois can vary greatly from the standardized language and is usually only spoken within communities and passed down orally. It differs from pidgin which is a simplified version of a language spoken between people without a common vernacular.

In French, ‘patois’ means dialect though in Old French, it means clumsy or uncultivated speech. Thus, the use of the word can have a condescending overtone. Writing on the fickleness of dialectical hierarchy, linguist Jean Jaurès notes, “The language of a vanquished people is called patois.” In other words, it isn’t linguistic merit but pure might that decides who’s dialect is cultivated and who’s is crass.

Having seen patois before in Charles Elster’s weighty tome, Word Workout, I was already aware of its first meaning. This past week, though, while working at Long Wind Organic Tomato Farm in Thetford, Vermont, I learned its second.

Patois (also called Patwa) is the native language of almost three million Jamaicans including five who worked alongside me at Long Wind Farm. Patois is a Creole language derived from the English colonists who ruled Jamaica, African word borrowings, and French, Spanish, and Portuguese influences.

No doubt aided by its condescending namesake, The New York Times reports that Patois is “stigmatized with second-class status and often mischaracterized as a poorly structured form of English.” One balmy summer evening, while enjoying a beer and jerk chicken, I had the chance to learn some. Here are highlights:

Patois: Wah Gwan
Meaning: Hello

Patois: De olda de moon, de brighter it shines
Meaning: The older the person, the wiser, more beautiful, and vibrant they are

Patois: Ya so bad luck even an empty gun would still shoot ya
Meaning: You’re so unlucky even a gun without bullets would harm you.

While talks are afoot on changing Jamaica’s official language to Patois, for the foreseeable future, it will remain English. Unfortunately, like many small languages, Patois isn’t available on mainstream language learning platforms. For those interested, here’s a good resource to start: Jamaican Patois.

This blog will continue all year, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below. Also let us know if you would like to write a guest column.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image Source: Jamaican Flag & Jerk Chicken courtesy of Leo Barnes. I’m hungry now!

Word of the Week! Halcyon

A break in the tropical, oppressive weather of late made move-in day at the university a pleasant event for our first-year students. I hope they’ll recall it later as part of a four-year halcyon time in their lives.

Students face a great deal more anxiety than I did, 45 years ago (!) when I arrived as a clueless but hopeful freshman on the UVA campus (I mean Grounds–sorry for that near slip, Virginia Cavaliers). I regard those four years, especially the last two after I found my way academically and socially, to be a tranquil, happy time in my life. I recall those years, as do a few UVA friends I still see, quite fondly.

I’ve not covered this word, which seems a pity. It’s common in Humanities texts, especially literary works. We might use “idyll” as a near synonym. The etymology interests me a great deal; I didn’t know it before writing this post. We get our word thanks to Ancient Greeks and Romans; the OED tells us that our “halcyon” descends from the Latin “alcyōn. . . a mythical bird identified by the ancients with the kingfisher, believed to nest on the sea < ancient Greek ἀλκυών, in the same sense, of unknown origin; perhaps a Mediterranean loanword.”

How did a bird come to signify a lovely, even blissful period of life, when the cares of the world seem far away? The halcyon of myth would brood on her nest for days, The OED etymology tells us. It would “charm the wind and waves into calm.”

That’s sense of calm serves as our currently common definition. Again, the OED has it, as noun or adjective, to denote “A period of calm, happiness, or prosperity; (as a mass noun) calm, tranquillity. Also: a period of calm or pleasant weather.” The dictionary notes the phrase “halcyon days” as well.

Usage of our word has declined from its peak of popularity in the 19th Century. Perhaps the nastiness and breakneck pace of the century that followed put “halcyon” into my category of “endangered words.” I’d like to think that when our current troubles–and they are multiple–pass, we might again enjoy some halcyon days.

Meanwhile, students, slow down enough to at least savor Fall in Central Virginia. It can be a wistful, lovely time that will pass quickly but that you will recall forever.

This blog will not pass on but instead continue all year, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image “Move-in Day, Tulane University, 2009” courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Metaphor of the Month! Mercurial

Special thanks to contributor Sarah Spencer, studying Psychology at Richmond. She nominated this word, one I use personally but have not yet covered here.

August proves generally hot in Central Virginia, and even if nearly all modern thermometers do not use toxic mercury, the mercury does begin to rise and fall more than in July. Our most mercurial months, October and March, lie in wait. Our metaphor refers to these quick rises or drops, but not merely in temperature. A mercurial person shifts moods as fast as temperatures in Fall or Spring.

The OED is acting up today, but I got as far as seeing a 14th Century date of first recorded use, as well as the definitions “having a lively, volatile, or restless nature.” I have encountered the rather dainty term in literature; it also appears in journalistic pieces about public figures with thin skins; it gives us a polite alternative to calling someone a “brat,” or a “jerk.” Not all mercurial persons are mean; one might shift back and forth from giddy to sad without hurting anyone else. A mercurial child (if not your own) who throws a tantrum in a store can be humorous.

Ultimately, our term goes back to the fleet-footed Roman god Mercury, who lent his name to quicksilver, the element found in older thermometers.

Thanks, Sarah. I hope you can avoid mercurial persons, except in a professional capacity, even if we cannot avoid mercurial weather.

This blog will roll on into better weather and the start of classes, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Word of the Week! Quine

I really enjoy the New York Time‘s five-letter-word game, Wordle. Today I guessed “quine” on my third guess of six. The correct answer, that I got on try five, was “penne,” but I won’t digress about pasta, despite the great basil from our garden, waiting to be turned into pesto.

The Wordle got me to wonder where I had heard “quine,” a word I never use. Now, after doing some reading, I plan to use it a great deal. It describes perfectly an action we encounter daily. While the OED gives many antique definitions, the free site Wikionary provides a modern definition, to “deny the existence or significance of something obviously real or important.” The etymology interests me:

Named after philosopher and logician Willard Van Orman Quine. Senses related to self-reference are coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1979 in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach (referencing the paradox named after him), while the verb sense of “to deny the importance or significance of something” was independently coined by Daniel Dennett in 1978 in The Philosophical Lexicon.

Now we have a verb for what climate-change deniers, flat-earth believers, and conspiracy theorists do. With hearsay “evidence” and pretzel logic (more than a Steely Dan album) they quine when presented with facts and reason.

Thank you, social media, for enabling these quiners in our midst. We might call social media a “Quine Engine.” I’d prefer a world where the quiners acted like Grandpa in the Simpsons, for all the evil it would do.

Yell all you wish, even quine if that makes you happy, but this blog will continue in the summer months, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image Source: Wikipedia Commons for “angry”

Word of the Week! Saunter

The Atlantic, still one of my favorite publications after more than 40 years as a subscriber, runs archived pieces from its illustrious past; no less a writer than Henry David Thoreau contributed to the magazine in its first decades. Recently Thoreau’s “Walking” ran and this passage by the sage of Walden Pond struck my fancy:

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander.

There the Republic was in 1862, fighting for its life in a bitter Civil War, and Thoreau found solace in walking and in words. The OED lists the etymology of our word as “obscure,” noting only a 15th Century first recorded use. I’m going with Thoreau’s folk etymology, given no other compelling counterargument.

I’ve never encountered one connotation of sauntering before, given by the dictionary, to “wander or travel about aimlessly or unprofitably; to travel as a vagrant.” The next definition, given as “obsolete” is to stroll in a leisurely way.

Well then, I’m obsolete, like Thoreau who also rambled on his walks. The devil take the power-walkers, the step-counters, the harried moms I see on my way to work. They frantically push a baby, walk a dog, and talk on the phone at the same time.

Thoreau adds about sauntering that “we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” Indeed. The writer worried about the fencing off of once-wild lands until the walker would only be able to stay on paths and roads. He hoped that day would be far off, and he got his wish. He died about the time The Atlantic ran his piece before our modern era of sign-posts and security systems, secure (as am I) that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

So I encourage you to leave the smart watch counting your steps at home and just take a walk in a National or State Park. Yes, you’ll want a phone if you get lost or injured, but try sauntering. Take a topo map you’ve learned to read, a magnetic compass, water and snacks; I’ll defy Thoreau on that as I’ve been lost only once in the woods and my map-reading training got me out. Or stay on well marked trails. They are still wilder than where the baby-strollers and power-walkers make their frantic way.

Sauntering will refresh your soul, as Thoreau intended.

As we all saunter toward the Fall semester (my final one as Writing Center Director) send words and metaphors of interest to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image: from Wikipedia, Thoreau’s Cabin (replica) and statue of the writer out sauntering, Walden Pond.

Metaphor of the Month! Shrinking Violet

By Leo Barnes

A shrinking violet is an exaggeratedly shy person. Since violets grow in the low herb layer of most forests, their rich purple petals are often veiled behind other vegetation. So the metaphor goes, getting a shy person out of their shell is as hard as spotting violets in a forest.

In pop culture, two figures – ironically highly visible superheroes – come to mind: Violet Parr and Salu Digby. Parr, the shy heroine from The Incredibles franchise, has the power of invisibility while Digby from DC comics is better known as her alter ego Shrinking Violet, and can shrink herself. How apropos!

While we might often overlook shrinking violets, both popular media and real life remind us not to judge a book by its cover. Charismatic Atticus Finch may have endeared himself to readers in To Kill a Mockingbird but it was Boo Radley, the town recluse, who saved the day. In the Harry Potter novels, the unprepossessing Neville Longbottom was the one who ultimately killed Voldemort. In 2014, Ronald Read, a Vermont janitor and gas station clerk, donated six million dollars to his town library and hospital – money he had earned over a lifetime of frugality and investing. This from a man who barely graduated high school and was often mistaken for being broke.

While shrinking violets can be difficult to draw out, in my book a reserved nature is certainly better than an overbearing one. Sometimes shyness is endearing and, in the case of Read or Radley, even noble.

Editor’s Note: Thank you, Leo, for another excellent guest-post. I found a claim of first usage in 1820, followed by explosive growth on both sides of the Atlantic, here.

Leo’s in Indonesia for the summer, teaching English in Kediri in June as part of Dr. Leslie Bohon’s Global EFL program. I’m jealous!

The violets may have faded in my yard, but the blog continues all summer after a hiatus (a 2022 WOTW) for the rest of June. You might, however, see a loan-word from Irish here, mid-month.

As you enjoy your holidays, send words and metaphors to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.