Word of the Week
16 March 2010
When I was quite young - maybe thirteen or fourteen - I used to take the bus into town, and go into the National Gallery at the bottom of the Mound. I remember going again and again to see one painting: a painting of trees in blossom by Vincent van Gogh. (It is at the RSA in London at the moment, but it will be back soon!)
Anyway, one week - from saved up pocket money - I bought a set of watercolour paints. Thinking I would be the next Van Gogh, I tried a couple of things - they were not very good, and the paints ended up in the bottom of a drawer. But, I never forgot the paints: they had such fantastic names (yellow ochre, Prussian blue, cadmium red!)
In any culture or society, colour tends to carry meanings or suggestions (eg "It was a black day for Scotland.") In some Higher English classes just now we are reading and talking about the novel The Great Gatsby. In this novel, F Scott Fitzgerald uses colour to suggest certain things - green for jealousy and money (the colour of dollar bills), white for innocence and purity, etc.
The writer John Berger has written that cadmium red is "the colour of childhood innocence." Howwever, if you go darker you get the red used in the paintings of Caravaggio. Here is John Berger again:
"Perhaps my favourite red is Caravaggio's. He uses it in painting after painting (The Death of the Virgin in the Louvre for example). The red by which you swear to love forever. The red whose father is the knife. The red which Naguib Mahfouz was thinking about in Cairo, when he wrote 'The beloved may absent herself from existence, but love does not.' "
Now, Caravaggio...
09 March 2010
Lachrymose is an adjective meaning tearful. It can also mean "tending to cause tears."
The word comes from the Latin noun "lacrima" meaning "a tear."
In a recent exchange in the letters page of The Guardian newspaper, the novelist Martin Amis was accused of being unfeeling. He responded by saying that, on occasion, he had been "lachrymose."
02 March 2010
Gargantuan is an adjective meaning huge or enormous.
It came up in my S1 class last week. (Several pupils knew the meaning!)
The word comes from the name of a character in a book by the old French writer Rabelais: Gargantua was a giant king known for his huge appetite. The Collins dictionary notes that some people maintain that gargantuan should be used only in connection with food.
Interestingly, Rabelais is mentioned by one of my favourite poets, George Barker, in his great poem To My Mother, which starts:
Most near, most dear, most loved and most far,
Under the window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,
Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,
Irresistible as Rabelais...
24 February 2010
Tenebrous is a poetic/literaryadjective meaning gloomy, shadowy or dark. It comes form Latin origins.
The reason it is this week's word is because I was reading a story over the holiday by Joseph Conrad called "Typhoon". The word "tenebrous" appeared and I looked it up. "Typhoon" has been described by one critic as "The greatest story about a storm at sea ever written." It is worth a read, to marvel at the power and ferocity of the sea, the courage of the mariners, and for Conrad's hold on the reader. (The ending has a neat twist!)
(Mind you, anything by Conrad is worth reading: he is a master story teller).
09 February 2010
Slightly different this week! As you know, many words in English have come from other languages. Some have come a long way: "coffee" from Turkish, "robot" from Czech, "palaver" from Portugese; however, some words have come from much closer to home. The following words (in bold italics) all come from Scottish Gaelic:
'"Toss the caber from the glen over the loch" is an absurd slogan if all you want to do is sell plaid trousers to tourists.'
(Nicely put in a sentence by Ben Schott!)
