{"id":1504,"date":"2021-05-20T13:42:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T17:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1504"},"modified":"2021-05-20T14:00:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T18:00:04","slug":"word-of-the-week-monadnock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2021\/05\/20\/word-of-the-week-monadnock\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Monadnock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/05\/hasui-Fuji.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1505\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/05\/hasui-Fuji-300x208.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"513\" height=\"356\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/05\/hasui-Fuji-300x208.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/05\/hasui-Fuji-768x533.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2021\/05\/hasui-Fuji.jpeg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 513px) 100vw, 513px\" \/><\/a>I have long enjoyed climbing Old Rag mountain near Madison, VA. It provided me with a then-new word, when someone called it a monadnock. Since summer hiking weather is here, let&#8217;s explore what, at first glance, seems a Native-American word.<\/p>\n<p>Our word comes from Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, whose origin (thank you, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mount_Monadnock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>) &#8220;Loosely translated. . .means &#8216;mountain that stands alone.&#8217; &#8221;\u00a0 Over time, that peak figuratively crossed the Atlantic, so alpinists all over the world refer to such lonely peaks as Monadnocks.<\/p>\n<p>As metaphor, the word has real power. I&#8217;ve heard people of strong character called &#8220;mountains,&#8221; but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/121068?redirectedFrom=Monadnock&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the OED<\/a> has an excellent example by W.H. Auden, in 1947, &#8220;O stiffly stand, a staid\u00a0<span class=\"quotationKeyword\">monadnock<\/span>, On her peneplain.&#8221; Auden just gave me another word I&#8217;ve never encountered; a peneplain is a level area formed by erosion. The poet knew his geology, all the better to frame a monadnock.<\/p>\n<p>Get out and climb a peak this summer (if you can beat the crowds, post-COVID). I&#8217;ll save Old Rag for the off-season.<\/p>\n<p>The blog will continue occasionally all summer, but 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 of Fuji, one of the world&#8217;s most famous monadnocks, by Kawase Hasui.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have long enjoyed climbing Old Rag mountain near Madison, VA. It provided me with a then-new word, when someone called it a monadnock. Since summer hiking weather is here, let&#8217;s explore what, at first glance, seems a Native-American word. Our word comes from Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, whose origin (thank you, Wikipedia) &#8220;Loosely &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2021\/05\/20\/word-of-the-week-monadnock\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Monadnock<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87399,3715,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-metaphor","category-stem","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-og","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504","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=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1507,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions\/1507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}