Tag Archives: words

Helvetica

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Some people care about shoes.  They buy them often, they consider carefully which pair to wear, and they notice other people’s shoes, perhaps even judge others by their shoes.  I notice fonts.  I just do.  For the most part, I notice the gag-me awful ones and the perfectly fitting fonts.  A realtor in our small town just established his own business: his signs are the most artless, ugly, horrific, disaster of graphic art.  My daughter-in-law and I just point and groan when we see them. 

I used to make the common mistake of using multiple fonts in a document when so many first became available. (cringe) I remember my first encounter with Helvetica back in 1988: the Director of Admissions sat at my desk and rhapsodized about the clean lines, sans serif, readability, attractiveness, etc. etc.  I don’t fuss with fonts much with blogging, but with other documents I spend time clicking, trying different fonts, judging their appeal.  I will not use Times New Roman.  Comic Sans seems too childish, a good choice only if you’re typing a thank you note from a six month old. 

Using Netflix’s Watch Instantly, I enjoyed Gary Hustwit’s documentary, Helvetica.  The 80 minute film gives the history of the font designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 in Switzerland. You meet two dozen graphic designers, who discuss their use or non-use of Helvetica. 

The parts I enjoyed the most were the three-minute sequences of signs –street signs, business signs, slogans on clothes, billboards, civic signs– which were interspersed between the interviews with the designers.   Helvetica is truly ubiquitous.  Even the IRS tax forms are printed with it!  Here are some tidbits I scribbled down as I watched:

         ~  “Creating order is typology.”

          ~  the DNA of letter forms (these designers are passionate; but I loved that turn of phrase)

          ~  “Graphic designers can’t see historical movies because the fonts are always wrong.”

          ~  If you are heavy in the middle you wouldn’t wear tight tee shirts.  Helvetica is heavy in the middle and needs lots of white space around it.

          ~  ABH = anything but Helvetica

          ~  Helvetica came out of modernism.  Grunge typography came out of postmodernism.  Designers today are swinging back to Helvetica but are using it in unique or more creative ways.

Now, it was an enjoyable DVD for a cold, January Sunday afternoon while my husband napped, but I wouldn’t spend money to watch it.  There was a sprinkling of salty language and a few salty images (especially in the grunge section.)  If you get off on graphic design and fonts, you may enjoy it.

What is your favorite font?

Creative Christmas Gifts

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I promise to focus on Thanksgiving…starting tomorrow!   Here are two creative gift ideas.

The first is from my niece Olivia.  One year she did Memories in a Bottle.  She typed up short vignettes, even two-or-three-sentence memories on the long side of brightly colored paper (Page Setup Landscape).   She folded these strips into accordion  folds and put them into a  decorative bottle. [Example: I remember when we drank Hot Chocolate every Sunday night before we went to bed.  The memory of the melted marshmallows still warms me.]  She typed up enough strips so her parents could shake out a folded strip of paper and read one a day until Valentines Day. 

This would work well in any direction: grandparents, parents, siblings, child.  I think it might be especially good for the child who needs to be reminded of his/her roots.  It’s a gift that needs some time for the yeast of ideas to rise. 

The second, Countdown to Christmas, comes from my next door friend/neighbor Rhonda.  Her daughter Lori is a teacher overseas and won’t be able to come home for Christmas.  Her daughter asked family not to send bulky items which will be expensive to ship home later. 

Rhonda’s Christmas Gift to her daughter is a collection of memories. Rhonda asked friends and family to write a letter to Lori, including pictures, and give the letter to Rhonda by this weekend.  She made a beautiful binder with a letter for each day of December enclosed in page protectors.  The letters go behind a page for each day of December which has photos from Lori’s childhood artistically added. 

I can’t describe the creativity that I saw last night, both in form of the letters, and in the pages marking the days.  This is the perfect project for scrapbookers.  It is small enough in scope to actually get finished!

The package will be mailed today and get to Lori by December 1st.  Wouldn’t this be a great idea for soldiers, missionaries or friends overseas?  It’s a lovely idea for any long-distance loved one.   

Funny Mispronunciations

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One of the occupational hazards of being a reader is using a word in speech that one has read silently and stumbling in the pronunciation of said word.  There’s nothing like saying a word with confidence but incompetence, watching the listener screw up their face either in confusion or laughter, hearing the illuminating correction and having a hearty laugh at yourself. 

One of the joys of listening to books read on Librivox is catching an ‘oops’ from the mouth of their lovely volunteer readers.  I laugh out loud when ‘the patience of Job’ is pronounced like a wage earner.  One of the joys of listening to professionally produced books on tape is catching one of my own mistakes.  “Oh, is that how you say it?”

My last name is commonly mispronounced.  Before “No Call”, I was tipped off to telemarketers by the botched pronunciation.  The grocery store clerks who look at the receipt and say “Thank you, Miz ________” make me laugh too.

And for those who care:  Magistra Mater is  Mah-GEE(hard G)-struh  MAH-tair  Think “TEA with MaGEEstra.”

Proper Nouns

Wodehouse  – it’s supposed to rhyme with wood
Cowper – sounds like Cooper
Goethe – my SIL’s mother quoted Goethe and pronounced it GO-eth. 

“Mother, that name is  GERT-a” she said with the proper form-your-mouth-like-an-o-and-say-e-technique, to which her mother replied, “You can call it GERT-a if you’d like; I’ll say  GO-eth.”

Isak Dinesen – for years, in my mind I said DINE-sen,

until I heard it correctly spoken DIN-es-sen

Camus – it is not CAY-mus, it’s caMOO
Dumas – another French name to trip you up: dooMAH
Keats and Yeats – wah, wah they don’t rhyme! KEETS and YATES

Edinburgh – it looks like it should end with a burg, right?  Not!  ED-in-BURR-a

My Oopses

primer – long i when it’s paint. But if it’s a book of elementary information

you say PRIMmer

Orion – there was confusion when I said ORion instead of ohRYAN
vegan – hard and soft g’s trip me up all the time. 

I thought this was VEJen instead of VEEgan

bade – the past tense of bid is pronounced BAD – forget the silent e
victual – doesn’t it look like VICK-shoe-ol?  Nah, it’s pronounced VITtle
jihad – not that long ago I said JIE-had.  Ouch! 

Everyone else knows it is jih-HAHD

Oopses from Others

xylophone – my son thought this was pronounced ex-CELL-a-PHONE
roughage – one former boss gave this a French twist, saying ROO-ahzj
chihuahua – a friend’s husband said chih-WHO-ah-WHO-ah
synecdoche – William Safire wrote about Jerry Brown (remember him?)

saying SIN-ec-DOACH in an interview. Safire pondered the etiquette of correcting a governor; the correct pronunciation is sih-NEK-duh-KEY

I’ve run out of time to ponder and remember my favorites. 

Help me out, would you?  Correct my corrections, if need be.

What words have you or yours mispronounced?

Food Words

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Wednesday Words

“Sugars and starches are compounds made of only three elements — carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. When sugars and starches are broken down to these elements, there are two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen for every atom of carbon. Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen are the same as a molecule of water.  For this reason, sugars and starches were called carbohydrates which means watered carbon.”


“In the eighteenth century, scientists became interested in a kind of substance found in all living things that acted differently from all other substances.  If a fluid like blood or egg white was heated, it did not become a boiling liquid like water or oil.  Instead, it became a solid.  And, if this was not strange enough, once changed to a solid, it could never again become a liquid.  Nothing could be done to return blood or egg white to its original liquid state. It did not take scientists long to realize that this strange material that changed permanently when heated was the very basis of all life. For this reason, they named it protein meaning, of first importance.“

~ Vicki Cobb in Science Experiments You Can Eat

Three Common Words

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Today I give you three common words from Kristin Lavransdatter, The Mistress of Husaby.

Nice      (I initially learned this from my beloved Latin teacher)  The meaning of this word has changed from particular to pleasant.  Look it up and one definition is overdelicate or fastidious; fussy.  I have run across this meaning several times in Kristin Lavransdatter.  One character was described as being nice and hard on himself.  Knowing this meaning is the only way that sentence makes sense.  Austen readers beware!  This use is quite common with Austen.

Lavrans had always been so nice in shaving himself before each holy day. p. 240

Thing      How could we exist without this word?  Can you imagine going One Whole Day without using it? The second definition of this uses the word in the definition: something referred to by a word, a symbol, a sign, an idea.  In KL it is used in the Old Norse meaning of popular assembly.  A footnote explains the three classes of Things: the parish Thing, the county Thing and the Lagthing. 

From Answers.com: The English
word ‘thing’, meaning “object” is also derived from this; the semantic evolution having been roughly “assembly” → “court” →
“case” → “business” → “purpose” → “object”.

A related word is moot, which was an ancient English representative meeting of freemen in the shire.

Room     In the description of the great hall, the notes say: “Two rows of wooden pillars supported the roof.  Between the line of pillars and the wall on each side was the sleeping-accommodation – two box-beds with doors at one end of the hall, and two broad fixed benches running the rest of the length of the hall.  These benches were divided into sleeping-places for the warriors (originally called “rooms”), and were wide enough to admit of each man’s keeping his belongings by him, while his weapons hung on the wall above him.”  Our word room comes from the Old English rǖm.

Wednesday Words

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All these words are from Thomas Cahill’s Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

marmoreal   pertaining to or like marble –  “marmoreal Rome”

pellucidly   transparent, translucent, admitting the passage of light, easily understood
per (= through)  + lucid (suffused with light)  Do you notice that the prefix is assimilated?
The last letter of

the prefix changes to match the first letter of the base word or root, i.e.
 ad

+ tend = attend.    “as the New Testament pellucidly states”

soupçon   a very small amount, a trace;   it comes from the Latin to suspect “soupçon of social dignity”

prolix    unduly prolonged or drawn out, given to verbosity  from pro = forward + liquere = to be fluid

divagations   wandering or straying from a course or subject

shat   past and past participle of the other word.  Brand new word for this magistra.  Well.

Photo credit and Wednesday Word originator: Seasonal Soundings

Quote Poetry, Value Fidelity

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Touch of Class online catalog

When this gift came around at the bridal shower I was enamored.  Pen and notebook came out of my purse and I copied the information on the back.  House Parts makes the plaques; Touch of Class sells them.  In case anyone has eyesight as bad as mine, here’s a more readable version of the text.

ABANDON DOUBT    BE MINE   CALL IF YOU’RE LATE  DANCE AT WEDDINGS   EAT DESSERT FIRST   FLIRT   GAMBLE ON FOREVER   HARBOR A CRUSH   INITIATE ROMANCE   JUST SAY “YES”   KISS LIKE YOU MEAN IT   LOVE MY DOG   MAKE OUT MORE   NOT IN PUBLIC   OPEN YOUR HEART   PRETEND IT’S PROM NIGHT   QUOTE POETRY   RECIPROCATE   SHARE YOUR TOYS   TRUST   UNCORK CHAMPAGNE   VALUE FIDELITY   WRITE LOVE LETTERS   EXPECT HONESTY   YIELD TO CHOCOLATE   RENDEZVOUS

What is your favorite letter?  I love the M-N combination!  Do you dance at weddings?  My husband and I are shy dancers but we moved our shoulders and tapped our toes as we stood on the sidelines at the wedding this weekend.

Silly Language Lessons

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Semper ubi sub ubi.

One of the moments in our Latin class was when all the young students laughed at this and our beloved teacher, a giant in the academy, scratched his head and looked confused. 

You see, it makes no sense in Latin.

Only beginning students understand this. 

Semper (last syllable sounds like air) = always
Ubi (the vowel sounds in movie) = where
Sub (sounds like tube) = under

Get it?

                     ~    ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

Let’s switch to French.  The following is gibberish in French. 
Instead of the transliteration above, it is more a transcription of sounds. 

If you’ve never studied French, here are Carol’s easy rules of French pronunciation:

    Talk through your nose.
    Don’t pronounce the last letters of half of the words.

See if you can make sense of this.  You really need to speak this aloud, even if you are at work.

“Un petit d’un petit

S’étonne au hall

Un petit d’un petit

Ah! degrés de folles

Un dol de qui ne sort cesse

Un dol de qui ne se mène

Qu’importe un petit d’un petit

Tout Gai de Reguennes.”

I first read this in 1983 and laughed myself silly.  Now when I hear the English version, I speak along, in my head, with its Fr’anglais counterpart.

                     ~    ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

Last one, folks.  Same idea as above.

Et qui rit des curés d’Oc?
De Meuse raines, houp! de cloques.
De quelles loques ce turque coin.
Et ne d’anes ni rennes,

Ecuries des curés d’Oc.

If you figure these out, leave a comment.  Happy Thursday!

[Added later: I decided to resurrect my French which has been resting in peace since 1975.  If you want to **hear** me recite these pieces, it might make more sense.]


The Discarded Image

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The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis has been on my shelf for several years. 

Last summer while I was talking to my beloved Latin teacher, I mentioned reading Stuart Isacoff’s Temperament.  I had found it fascinating how both the ancient and medieval thinker linked all of life together.  Thus the numbers and distances of the planets were thought to be the link between the distances and ratios of musical intervals.  Even though their facts weren’t always correct they were certainly significant.  They looked at the details of life as symbols for some other reality. 

“Carol,” my teacher said. “Have you read The Discarded Image?  That’s precisely what that book is about!”  The Image in the title refers to the Model of the Universe, “the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organisation of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe.” (p.11) We cannot read medieval works with modern or post-modern minds and really know what they meant without understanding how they thought.

The first chapter was glorious and exciting. But, I’ll be honest: it was a hard book to read.  The difficulty lay in my own ignorance.  There were so many unfamiliar references and background chapters to wade through.  So I went to the last chapter, The Influence of the Model, and read that.  Next, I dipped into sections which looked interesting and then began again.  What helped me persevere were the lovely little pearls that were scattered across the pages.

The [evil] influences do not work upon us directly, but by first modifying the air…Hence when a medieval doctor could give no more particular cause for the patient’s condition he attributed it to ‘this influence which is at present i the air.’  If he were an Italian doctor he would doubtless say questa influenza.  The profession has retained the useful word ever since. (p.110)

To medieval folk looking into a night sky was not looking at darkness but through darkness.  They believed that space was not dark, nor silent. 

The ‘silence’ which frightened Pascal was, according to the Model, wholly illusory; and the sky looks black only because we are seeing it through the dark glass of our own shadow.  You must conceive yourself looking up at a world lighted, warmed, and resonant with music.  (p.112)

This just made me smile:

One gets the impression that medieval people, like Professor Tolkien’s Hobbits, enjoyed books which told them what they already knew.  (p.200)

This book is worth the effort required in reading it.  After reading this book I guarantee that you will read Lewis’s children’s literature differently. 

Here is a diamond of a quote which you need to copy into your journal or commonplace book. 

Literature exists to teach what is useful,
to honour what deserves honour,
to appreciate what is delightful.
The useful, honorable, and
delightful things are superior to it:
it exists for their sake;
its own use, honour, or delightfulness
is derivative from theirs.
(p. 214)

Wednesday Words

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Gavin the Great (my 2 year old grandson) loves Pooh.
His dad and mum are reading
The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne to him. 

This week the newest addition to his word-hoard is:

                   Pooh eats hon  ney.

Since he prefixes every sentence with a string of staccato “no” s
in the sense of wait-wait-wait, it comes out like this:

 No, no, no, no-no (pause) POOH (pause)  EATS (pause ) HONEY.

I declare, it is as much fun to watch him learn to talk
as it was to watch him learn to walk.

Here are some new-to-me words I’ve come across this week.  Check out Seasonal Soundings’ fabulous Wednesday Word entry.

nugatory               trifling, insignificant
scutage                 a tax paid in lieu of military service in feudal times
tendentious            having or showing a definite tendency or bias
acedia                   spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui
metempsychosis     transmigration of the soul
contumacious         stubbornly perverse or rebellious

As I wrote yesterday, I’m loving
Old English poetry and its word pictures.
Do you notice the space in the middle?
It’s called a caesura, which means
a pause in a line of verse. These lines
are from St. Andrew’s Voyage to Mermedonia.

Sage of counsel     he began to speak       
Wise of wit     he unlocked his word-hoard

Your turn….do you have a word, new or not that delights you?
Please, unlock your word-hoard in the comments!