Trivia on the Word, "Serendipity"

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28 January 

It was on this day in 1754 that the word "serendipity" was first coined. It's defined by Merriam-Webster as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for." It was recently listed by a U.K. translation company as one of the English language's 10 most difficult words to translate. Other words to make their list include plenipotentiary, gobbledegook, poppycock, whimsy, spam, and kitsch.

"Serendipity" was first used by parliament member and writer Horace Walpole in a letter that he wrote to an English friend who was spending time in Italy. In the letter to his friend written on this day in 1754, Walpole wrote that he came up with the word after a fairy tale he once read, called "The Three Princes of Serendip," explaining, "as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of." The three princes of Serendip hail from modern-day Sri Lanka. "Serendip" is the Persian word for the island nation off the southern tip of India, Sri Lanka.

The invention of many wonderful things have been attributed to "serendipity," including Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Charles Goodyear's vulcanization of rubber, inkjet printers, Silly Putty, the Slinky, and chocolate chip cookies.

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after he left for vacation without disinfecting some of his petri dishes filled with bacteria cultures; when he got back to his lab, he found that the penicillium mold had killed the bacteria.

Viagra had been developed to treat hypertension and angina pectoris; it didn't do such a good job at these things, researchers found during the first phase of clinical trials, but it was good for something else.

The principles of radioactivity, X-rays, and infrared radiation were all found when researchers were looking for something else.

Julius Comroe said, "Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter."

Wiktionary lists serendipity's antonyms as "Murphy's law" and "perfect storm."

Source

The Semi-Colon

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Two interesting takes on the semicolon, read on:

How to use a semicolon
The Great Semicolon Debate 

That DID it! (The Use of DO, DOES, DID)

Photo grabbed from Claresa.net

Do is a busy word in the English language. It can be a main verb, and it can also be used as an auxiliary verb. It is even used as a noun in informal English or British slang. Dictionary.com tells me that. :)

As a verb, Do takes the form of do, does, and did.

As a main verb, Do takes on the action word. Examples:

I do sit-ups every morning.
I did everything to improve the situation.  

It is when Do is used as an auxiliary verb, especially in the past tense, that I often get bothered. That is because many people use it wrongly. They'd go:

I did not noticed the hole on the street.

I did talked to him about it.

What did you did?

I see these on Facebook statuses, in emails, and even in formal writing. Please people, when you use Do as an auxiliary verb, ALWAYS pair it with a verb in its base form. The image above is a good reminder of this rule. Do is surrounded by verbs in the base form.

Examples:

I did not notice the hole on the street.
I did talk to him about it.
What did you do?

I do know that this medicine is good for us.
I didn't receive your message. (Not: I didn't received your message.)

Got the drift?

German Words In the English Language

I found this article today and I find it really interesting.

I also use the word über to mean exaggerated. I started using it after I took German 10 and 11 classes back in university. Please don't ask me how long ago was that. {lol}

The article starts with:

Über and Other German Loanwords

"Oprah is so über rich!"
"Those boots are über-hot!"
"My car is über fast, not to mention über sleek."
"What an über-difficult exam that was!"  

Continue reading... 

This is the beauty of a live language. It makes cross overs. In fact, a person who is good at Greek, Roman, and French words almost always can figure out the meaning of a word. He doesn't need a dictionary.

Dictionary.com's Word of the Year: Tergiversate

Tergiversate

Pronounced "ter-JIV-er-sate", it means “to change repeatedly one's attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc.; equivocate.”

Continue reading...

Where's the Edit Button on Facebook?

Posting with errors? I am guilty of this all the time!

If I really want to put out a good piece of writing (not like this one ~ lol), it takes me hours to finish it. And even if I feel that I am ready to publish it, I still edit it.

In this time and age, however, microblogging is so prevalent. Any thought, encounter, experience you have you always would want to shout it out there. Often you just type and push the Send / Publish button, and regret a minute later because what you had written badly needs editing.

For blogs or websites, it's easy to edit; but Facebook, nah. This is the status I want to edit. Look here:

The fourth line should read: Well, guess what? For 20 years, I was doing assignments.

Then next line: Everyone laughs.

The ones posted are not really wrong but for usage, style, I feel the corrections are more appropriate. But I can't find the edit button. Where is the edit button in Facebook?

Got excited to see that Edit or Remove option there. But look at my options:

No option to edit the post itself. 

Before, during the early days of Facebook, I remember clearly they have this Edit button. I should know because I would edit my posts several times. (lol) 

Wish they would bring it back. 

The Absence of a Pronoun Antecedent

An online local news provider reported about the same-sex marriage and went:

... This came amid news that New York City has also legalized gay marriage. It became the sixth state in the United States to do so.

There are two things that are wrong in this sentence.

1. The pronoun It in the second sentence does not have an antecedent. The pronoun does not clearly point to New York City.
2. If the It pronoun does point to New York City, then it negates the succeeding thought, which is "the sixth state in the United States..." New York City is not a state. There is a New York state of which New York City is a part of. 

Be careful with your pronoun antecedents and facts.