This is another episode in the life of an amateur philologist. As the log- will tell you, it’s about words, the philo-meaning love for ist meaning person a philologist is a person who loves words. As a child, I studied the origins of both words and personal names, believing that the meaning of a name held clues to that person’s character. I spent my babysitting money on baby name books to appropriately name the characters in my stories. This was long before the days of personal computers or the internet, so I typed my stories on my mother’s, and later my own typewriter.
Once in jr. high, due to a transgression, the nature of which I do not now recall, I was sentenced to a couple hours of detention, and the teacher in charge very unwisely assigned us to copying pages out of the dictionary. I say unwisely because while he may have gotten the desired groan from the boys, in my case it was a squeal of delight. Here I was exposed to a whole wonderland of new vocabulary. He would have done better to have given me the sports pages. That would have quelled my feeling of delight.
to suppress; put an end to; extinguish:
The troops quelled the rebellion quickly.
to vanquish; subdue.
to quiet or allay (emotions, anxieties, etc.):
The child's mother quelled his fears of the thunder.
Instead, I chortled my way through the punishment, which for me, was no punishment at all. to chuckle gleefully.
verb (used with object), chor·tled, chor·tling.
to express with a gleeful chuckle:
to chortle one's joy.
noun
a gleeful chuckle.
A word listed with chortle was snigger. I always pictured this one cartoon dog sniggering. My favorite reference defines it as snicker.
WORDS RELATED TO SNIGGER
dump, twit, gird, slam, deride, jest, rally, caricature, leer, snicker, swipe, insult, lampoon, decry, travesty, crack, scorn, smile, gibe, slight
They’re probably not old words, but they’re good words which onomatopoeically describe the words themselves. The great Bard William Shakespeare would have loved them. If he didn’t use them himself, which I believe he did, in at least one play, he should have.
Fustilarian is a word the Bard did use as an insult, but the dictionary lists no definition for it, but from the context I can guess at the meaning. It would mean someone fussy about his appearance, but has no basis for being so.
onomatopoeia noun
the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.
a word so formed.
the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.
What words would you like to see dusted off and used again? Words are the very stuff of writing, so there is the connection to writing. Words are both my tools and my toys. What are words to you?
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