{"id":2436,"date":"2025-02-28T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2436"},"modified":"2025-02-28T12:04:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T17:04:17","slug":"word-of-the-week-supine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/02\/28\/word-of-the-week-supine\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Supine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/02\/supine-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2441\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/02\/supine-1-300x221.jpg\" alt=\"Fainting Couch\" width=\"300\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/02\/supine-1-300x221.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/02\/supine-1.jpg 599w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Hard to think that this word, another I found in the work of Edith Wharton, has not yet appeared as a Word of The Week. So what do we know about &#8220;supine&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/dictionary\/supine_adj?tab=meaning_and_use#19702380\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED notes<\/a> its Latin origin, to lie face upwards. The dictionary records earliest uses to the 15th Century, making it again a Gutenberg word. Printing simply made available a term already in the vocabulary of educated folk.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of being supine as merely lying down, or for one of Wharton&#8217;s characters, collapsing upon a fainting couch.<\/p>\n<p>To be truly supine, however, not just any sort of fainting will do. One must face upward, as in the final pose of Yoga practice, <em>savasana<\/em> or &#8220;corpse pose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Figuratively, as the OED entry also notes, our word can mean disinclined to act, from laziness, fear, greed, or some other motive. Here I&#8217;ve heard our word used to describe the current Congress, supine before a leader with authoritarian intentions.<\/p>\n<p>When will they wake up? I thought that I had covered &#8220;Quisling&#8221; here before; perhaps that one will be a Metaphor of the Month soon. We shall see if events warrant that frightening word.<\/p>\n<p>Send me words and metaphors at jessid-at-richmond-edu or by 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 noreferrer\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard to think that this word, another I found in the work of Edith Wharton, has not yet appeared as a Word of The Week. So what do we know about &#8220;supine&#8221;? The OED notes its Latin origin, to lie face upwards. The dictionary records earliest uses to the 15th Century, making it again a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/02\/28\/word-of-the-week-supine\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Supine<\/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":[2516,40199,87406,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-literature","category-loan-word","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Di","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","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=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2445,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}