Word of the Day: Isolato

From Dictionary.com:

isolato \ahy-suh-LEY-toh\ , noun:  
a person who is spiritually isolated from or out of sympathy with his or her times or society.
Also, in the years since the events you are investigating, my life has been that of an isolato, a shepherd on a mountaintop, situated as far from so-called civilization as possible, and it has made me unnaturally brusque and awkward.
-- Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter, 1998
There is, of course, Paul's unremitting aloneness: he is in every sense an isolato, and if this state is elicited by his impertinence and his refusal to conform, it is brought about as well by the inability of all those around him to perceive either his uniqueness or his pain.
-- Philip Stevick, The American Short Story, 1984
The most predictable Justices now on the Court, Antonin Scalia and Thomas, seem brooding isolatoes, openly contemptuous of the doctrinal laxness of their brethren.
-- Louis Menand, "Decisions, Decisions," The New Yorker, July 11, 2005
Isolato was popularized by Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick. The word comes through Italian from the Latin word insulātus meaning "made into an island."

Source

Check out Emotionary

I stumbled upon this blog, Emotionary through David Kanigan. It says:

The Emotionary is a blog established for the creation of “words that don’t exist for feelings that do.”  The Emotolution began on May 15, 2013.  The Emotionary can be found on Tumblr and on Twitter.

So do you have an emotion that you don't have a word for? Check out Emotionary! :D

The Uses of While

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My interest in the conjunction while got picked when I saw a sign on SM Department Stores, which goes, "Pay your bills while shopping."

When I read that line, I had to look up the word "while" again. I know that while connotes simultaneous action. This means that I am paying bills and shopping at the same time, which is highly improbable to do.

Here's what I learned (again) from Dictionary.com about the uses of the conjunction "while."

1. during or in the time that.
2. throughout the time that; as long as.
3. even though; although: While she appreciated the honor, she could not accept the position.
4. at the same time that (showing an analogous or corresponding action): The floor was strewn with books, while magazines covered the tables.

That SM line is correct after all. :D

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.