Fun With Words: Glossary of Linguistics and Rhetoric ablaut a vowel change that accompanies a change in grammatical function. Same as "gradation." Sing, sang, and sung. accidence the part of morphology that deals with the inflections of words. accismus pretended refusal of something desired. acrolect a variety of language that is closest to a standard main language, especially in an area where a creole is also spoken. adianoeta an expression that carries both an obvious meaning and a second, subtler meaning. adnominal characteristic of an adnoun. adnominatio assigning to a proper name its literal or homophonic meaning; also, paronomasia or polyptoton. adnoun the use of an adjective as a noun. adynaton a declaration of impossibility, usually expressed as an exaggerated comparison with a more obvious impossibility. alexia inability to read, usually caused by brain lesions; word blindness. alliteration repetition of the same sound beginning several words placed close together, usually adjacent. alphabetism the expression of spoken sounds by an alphabet.
Artist Francis Bacon on the Role of Suffering and Self-Knowledge in Creative Expression by Maria Popova “An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.” “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer… his unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden,” Viktor Frank wrote in his spectacular 1946 treatise on the human search for meaning. We’re immersed in a great deal of cultural mythology regarding spiritual and psychoemotional suffering, but nowhere is it more dangerously romanticized than in the “tortured genius” myth of creative destiny — a myth whose patron saints include tragic heroes like Vincent van Gogh, David Foster Wallace and Sylvia Plath. Portrait of Francis Bacon by Irving Penn Bacon, whom Gruen describes as seemingly enveloped in a time vacuum, presenting “the image of an awkward teenager, aged 62,” reflects with remarkable self-awareness on what he calls his “gilded gutter life” and contemplates the broader role of suffering in the creative experience: Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon, 1969 Donating = Loving
Online Etymology Dictionary 7 of the most badass women who ever lived (who you've probably never heard of) For centuries, women all over the world have fought and ruled, written and taught. They’ve done business, explored, revolted and invented. They’ve done everything men have done — and a lot of things they haven’t. Some of these women we know about. More from GlobalPost: 8 reasons Uruguay is not all that The women who shaped our planet are too many to mention, so here are just a few of the most frankly badass females of all time. 1. A modern-day Khutulun takes aim in Ulan Bator. In the 13th century, when khans ruled Central Asia and you couldn’t go 10 minutes without some Genghis, Kublai or Mongke trying to take over your steppe, women were well-versed in badassery. One woman, however, had the combination of both skill and might. Off the battlefield and in the wrestling ring, Khutulun went similarly undefeated. More women who fought: Boudica, the original Braveheart. Tomoe Gozen, one of Japan’s few known female warriors, who fought in the 12th century Genpei War. 2. “Women, a warning. 3.
IPA Typewriter If the title above does not display correctly, you should click on "About" to find out how to get a unicode font. Introduction You can use this tool to type phonemic symbols to be inserted in a word processor. You can also use it to produce the code needed to insert phonemic symbols in a web page. To start work, use the buttons below to choose which you want to do. Use the "About" button to get more information anbout using phonetic symbols in word documents and web pages. Use the "Intro" button to get back to this page. I would be grateful for feedback about this tool. Word Processing Use the phonetic chart on the right to type the text that you want. When you are ready to copy what you have typed, first click the button below. Your text will appear in a pop-up window. Go to your word document and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V in a Mac), or the Paste button, in order to paste in the word. You may need to adjust the font of the text in your document. Web Tool
Maya Angelou on Identity and the Meaning of Life by Maria Popova “Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.” The light of the world has grown a little dimmer with the loss of the phenomenal Maya Angelou, but her legacy endures as a luminous beacon of strength, courage, and spiritual beauty. Reflecting on her life, Angelou — who rose to cultural prominence through the sheer tenacity of her character and talent, despite being born into a tumultuous working-class family, abandoned by her father at the age of three, and raped at the age of eight — tells Rich: I’ve been very fortunate… I seem to have a kind of blinkers. She later revisits the question of identity, echoing Leo Buscaglia’s beautiful meditation on labels, as she reflects on the visibility her success granted her and the responsibility that comes with it: What I represent in fact, what I’m trying like hell to represent every time I go into that hotel room, is myself. The kindnesses … I never forget them. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
The Ego and the Universe: Alan Watts on Becoming Who You Really Are by Maria Popova The cause of and cure for the illusion of separateness that keeps us from embracing the richness of life. During the 1950s and 1960s, British philosopher and writer Alan Watts began popularizing Eastern philosophy in the West, offering a wholly different perspective on inner wholeness in the age of anxiety and what it really means to live a life of purpose. We owe much of today’s mainstream adoption of practices like yoga and meditation to Watts’s influence. Alan Watts, early 1970s (Image courtesy of Everett Collection) Though strictly nonreligious, the book explores many of the core inquiries which religions have historically tried to address — the problems of life and love, death and sorrow, the universe and our place in it, what it means to have an “I” at the center of our experience, and what the meaning of existence might be. Watts considers the singular anxiety of the age, perhaps even more resonant today, half a century and a manic increase of pace later:
Andy Warhol on Sex and Love by Maria Popova “Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don’t have it.” “Is sex necessary?” Warhol, who identified as gay and whose work drew heavily on his participation in the LGBT community, confessed to his biographer in 1980, at the age of fifty-two, that he was still a virgin. Portrait of Andy Warhol by Jack Mitchell Warhol’s central premise is that our greatest anguish about love and sex comes from the buildup of our fantasies and their inevitable clash with reality — the bodily counterpart to Stendhal’s “crystallization” theory. The most exciting thing is not-doing-it. Consciously or not, his facetious approach to the subject becomes a meta-testament to his core admonition — that we, as a culture, are taking sex far too seriously to actually derive joy from it. There should be a course in the first grade on love. Warhol takes it a step further and applies Susan Sontag’s radical idea about remixing education to sex-ed: Illustration from 'This Is Warhol.' Donating = Loving
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Little-Known, Gorgeous Art by Maria Popova An important side of the beloved writer, who was as much an artist of pictures as he was of words. Storytelling icon J.R.R. Tolkien (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) was also among those rare creators with semi-secret talents in a discipline other than their primary realm of fame — but while his original sketches for the first edition of The Hobbit have seen the light of day in recent years, few realize that Tolkien, who self-illustrated many of his famous works, was as much an artist of pictures as he was of words. Unlike other famous authors who also drew but only as a hobby or diversion, including Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, Tolkien approached the visual medium with as much thoughtfulness and imaginative rigor as he did his stories. Wayne G. We have long felt that Tolkien’s art deserves to be as well known as his writings. 'They Slept in Beauty Side by Side' | Pencil 'Untitled (Two Boys at the Seaside)' | Watercolor, pencil 'Thought' | Pencil
"I Like To Employ The Power Of No": Jared Leto Jared Leto is backstage at a major concert venue in Romania just a few hours before his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, will headline for throngs of ecstatic fans. Leto could be boasting about the group's triumphant growth over the past decade, from minor opening act to bona fide phenomenon. (Two days before, the group packed a venue in Hungary, and tomorrow it will be Bulgaria, part of a worldwide tour that will extend from South America to South Africa.) Leto could be harping on his Academy Award earlier this year for his role in the movie Dallas Buyers Club. Yep, Leto is a tech geek. Leto is not just a pretty face, though his pretty face has been getting him noticed since he starred as Jordan Catalano in the ABC sitcom My So-Called Life in the 1990s. What Leto has embraced is that he can't engage in all these activities without discipline. Leto doesn't use the word "mission," but the filter he applies sounds like one: "I am an artist.
Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means by Maria Popova “There are a whole lot of ways to be perfect, and not one of them is attained through punishment.” “A Dog is, on the whole, what you would call a simple soul,” T.S. Eliot simpered in his beloved 1930s poem “The Ad-dressing of Cats,” proclaiming that “Cats are much like you and me.” Indeed, cats have a long history of being anthropomorphized in dissecting the human condition — but, then again, so do dogs. We’ve always used our feline and canine companions to better understand ourselves, but nowhere have Cat and Dog served a more poignant metaphorical purpose than in the 1992 essay “Dogs, Cats, and Dancers: Thoughts about Beauty” by Ursula K. Le Guin contrasts the archetypal temperaments of our favorite pets: Dogs don’t know what they look like. Artwork from 'The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs.' Cats, on the other hand, have a wholly different scope of self-awareness: Cats know exactly where they begin and end. Cats have a sense of appearance. Ursula K. Donating = Loving