{"id":1021,"date":"2019-10-25T11:10:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T15:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2019-10-25T11:10:27","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T15:10:27","slug":"word-of-the-week-sardonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/10\/25\/word-of-the-week-sardonic\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Sardonic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/10\/sardonic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1022\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/10\/sardonic.jpg\" alt=\"Sardonic\" width=\"340\" height=\"272\" \/><\/a>I enjoy a spooky post for Halloween, so this year to follow our 2018 Metaphor <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/09\/25\/metaphor-of-the-month-dark-night-of-the-soul\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Dark Night of the Soul<\/a>, I have a word useful all year long.<\/p>\n<p>Odd little boy that I was, I could not wait every month to grab a copy of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.famousmonsters.com\/about-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Famous Monsters of Filmland<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a black-and-white magazine covering horror films. One cover&#8217;s image stayed with me a long time: the image of Mr. Sardonicus, a man who suffers to terrible a scare that his face gets twisted into an eternal, Joker-style grin. There is nothing happy about such a fate.<\/p>\n<p>But is that &#8220;smile&#8221; of his really &#8220;sardonic&#8221;? Absolutely. According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/171025?redirectedFrom=sardonic&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OED<\/a> Entry, laughter or a smile meets the definition if done in a &#8220;bitter, scornful, mocking&#8221; way.\u00a0 That would also describe a great deal of humor in otherwise scary movies.<\/p>\n<p>As one might guess, the term\u00a0<em>sardonicus\u00a0<\/em>provides the original for several words in Romance languages, as well as our English term, with usage first recorded in the 17th Century.<\/p>\n<p>May all your goblins and ghouls bring only treats on October 31, and no sardonic tricks.<\/p>\n<p>Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>image courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mr._Sardonicus#\/media\/File:Sardgrin2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I enjoy a spooky post for Halloween, so this year to follow our 2018 Metaphor The Dark Night of the Soul, I have a word useful all year long. Odd little boy that I was, I could not wait every month to grab a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland,\u00a0a black-and-white magazine covering horror films. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/10\/25\/word-of-the-week-sardonic\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Sardonic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-gt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}