Grammar Punk Blog

Vespertine: of, relating to, or occurring in the evening; active, flowering or flourishing in the evening; crepuscular

Before I launch into the coolness and origin of this particular word, I want to call attention to one of the words definitive synonyms—namely crepuscular. I happen to have used that word before as a Word With You entry and here you probably thought most of these oddball words would never come in handy, am I right? Nyah.

Verpertine comes from the Hesperous, or the evening star. The most coon offshoot of vespertine is of course vespers, which means, you guessed it, an evening worship service.

Don’t you just love a word that wraps itself up so tidily?

Grammar Punk Sentence: R U 3

Ursula loved to spend evenings in her garden, surrounded by her vespertine lilies, nightshade, and mandrake roots, routing unwanted butterflies.

Teachers of English, writing, and grammar, challenge your students to explore their own favorite vespertine activities. Then write about it. And share!

The Decidedly Unmouselike Dormouse

The Dormouse, another slightly less ubiquitous character in the Tale of Alice and her Wonderland is another character I find fascinating—if not as colorful as the others. He spent much of his time in the story sleeping between the March Hare and The Hatter who used him as a cushion. To which he barely pays any mind at all.

The Dormouse is always falling asleep during the scene, waking up every so often, for example to say: `You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’ Pretty deep for a mouse.

All in all he’s not a terrible notable character…except that he is. As with the majority of characters in this truly timeless tome, the Dormouse has come to convey a creature who is sleepy and cranky and none too pleased to deal with fools. Not bad for a guy who’s as small as a minute.

Dormice are small for rodents, with a body length of between 6 and 19 cm (2.4 and 7.5 in), and weighing between 15 and 200 g (0.53 and 7.1 oz). They are generally mouse-like in appearance, but with furred, rather than scaly tails. Most species are nocturnal. Dormice have an excellent sense of hearing, and signal each other with a variety of vocalizations.

I won’t go into too much detail about the fact that the Romans found the small and adorable—if sleepy—dormouse a tasty snack. Yikes. And yuck. And stop that!

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to explore this enigmatic little character. There is apparently more to dormice than meets the eye.

Solipsistic: so·lip·sism

the belief that the only thing somebody can be sure of is that he or she exists, and that true knowledge of
anything else is impossible the theory that the only thing you can be certain about is your own existence and your own thoughts and ideas

a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing;

Solipsism /sɒlɨpsɪzəm/) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind, alone, is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical
position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. Although the number of individuals sincerely espousing solipsism has been small, it is not uncommon for one philosopher to accuse another’s arguments of entailing solipsism as an unwanted consequence, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has also served as a skeptical hypothesis.

Now there’s a word for you. Not to mention a lovely nihilistic view of the world. Can you say narcissist?

At least on the surface and of course I in no way embrace this philosophy but as I thought about it, I realized it bore thinking about. In the abstract only. The face remains that it is only our mind and the contents thereof we can be absolutely and incontrovertibly certain of, right? When you close your eyes and tune out the world does it cease to exist? When you die does not a whole state of existence die with you? Hard as we try, is it not ourselves that comes to the forefront of our thoughts as often as not? This is not a philosophy you can embrace literally but it does offer some food for thought. At least I think so.

Grammar Punk Sentence: L I 2 solipsism  

Camille’s tacitly absurd sense of solipsism was hard to take when she went off on a tangent touting her superior chocolate-chip
macadamia coconut surprise cookies every year at the annual bake sale.

Give this one a try. Write a Grammar Punk Sentence that contains at least two words with the letters L and I and the word solipsism.

Teachers of English this is a great point of discussion and challenge for writing if I ever saw one. Ask your students about their own sense of solipsism. Create a character with a dark side of this philosophy. Then write about it. And share!

The Generation Non-Gap

My 18 year old niece got into my car the other day and as I switched on the engine my rather blaring radio pounded out a hard-rock tune before I hastily turned it down. She raised an eyebrow at me her look loudly proclaiming the fact she was sure someone else must have been driving my car—which I countered with a pointed, “We created this music.”

This got me to thinking about the generation gap…that isn’t.

I think my generation and the next are to be the end to the official gapping between generations, at least a gap that has well-defined lines and parameters. Oh, there will still be generations; I just don’t think they will be so disparate.

Think about it. My grandparents grew up without electricity until they were well into adulthood. My parents—given the fact that they both grew up in very rural areas—also could remember the before and after of electricity. Indoor plumbing was also a before and after for my parents, my grandparents did without longer than they did with. Plumbing and electricity, two things we don’t even give a single thought to in our everyday lives.

My generation grew up in the completely 180 degree-ness of the ‘60’s pushing as hard and moving as fast as they could away from our parents generation. And succeeding. We took rock and roll to punk, heavy metal, grunge, and new wave—I apologize personally for disco which I protested from the beginning. The gap was wide and while not at all insurmountable, it was definite. I’ll be exploring the other aspects of separation in subsequent blogs.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, this is a great writing challenge for your students. Ask them to explore what they think separates them from their previous generation. And yours too. Write about it. Then share!

Bolide: a large meteor; fireball; a bright meteor that explodes

The name for a streaking meteor, especially one trailing sparks is the Greek word bolis, or literally a javelin or missile. I do love a literal word even if it’s rarely used literally or otherwise.

So, the next time you are looking up at the night sky and see the streak of a falling star—well, that won’t actually have that much to do with an exploding meteor but it’s close enough—you can think to yourself that it very nearly a bolide. Nearly.

It’s also another fantastic Scrabble/Boggle sort of word.

Grammar Punk Sentence: L E 4

Clarice prefers to make her entrance as a fire eater by bursting onto the stage like a bolide, resplendent in her beads and feathers and flames.

All right teachers of English, writing and grammar, here’s a good challenge word for your students. Challenge them to write a Grammar Punk sentence containing 4 words with the letters L and E and the word bolide. Then maybe challenge them to a game of Scrabble.

Limn: to draw or paint a picture of somebody or something, especially in outline

to describe something in words

Quite a definition for such a small word, eh? Like many cool small words this one comes from a much larger one, tracing its rooms back to the Latin illumiare, to illuminate. In this instance the illumination referred to decorating. Shakespeare used the term, look when a painter would surpass the life./in limning out a well-proportioned steed.

Okay, so this is likely not a word that will pop into casual conversation, at least not without some effort, but it is fabulous for Scrabble and it will have your next Boggle competitor reaching for their dictionary.

Teachers of English, writing and grammar, here’s a nice one to add to your vocabulary lists. Challenge your students to put it in a sentence then create a character around the sentence.

Grammar Punk Sentence: R A 3

Taking great pains to make sure her makeup properly limned her eyes—no raccoon eyes for her—Zelda was ready for her big scene.

You give it a try. Write a Grammar Punk sentence that contains 3 words with the letters R and A and the word limn. Then break out the Boggle!

One Space or Two

I can’t remember the price date that I learned that the proper way to separate sentences was now with one space not two but it was a fairly momentous one—in the grand scheme of things sort of way.

I read an article recently which strongly derided those stubborn and obviously misguided folk who still insist on those two spaces. Enough already! Why hit that space bar more times than is necessary.

“Forget about tolerating differences of opinion: typographically speaking, typing two spaces before the start of a new sentence is absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Ilene Strizver, who runs a typographic consulting firm The Type Studio, once wrote. “When I see two spaces I shake my head and I go, Aye yay yay,” she told me. “I talk about ‘type crimes’ often, and in terms of what you can do wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment. It’s a pure sign of amateur typography.” “A space signals a pause,” says David Jury, the author of About Face: Reviving The Rules of Typography. “If you get a really big pause—a big hole—in the middle of a line, the reader pauses. And you don’t want people to pause all the time. You want the text to flow.”

And there’s the thing with type being more precise and fonts doing a better job of evening things out, and blah, blah, blah. The thing is, it’s a tough habit to break. I tend to write a lot—then and now—and since much of my writing went off to be perused by others, and those others had definite ideas about one space versus two, I jumped on the bandwagon pretty quickly. But it was not easy. My thumb wanted to hit the space bar twice in quick succession just as it had ALWAYS done. And I couldn’t blame it.

It’s just that I’d been doing it the other way for sooooo long. How was I to be expected to stop doing something I barely had  conscious thought of doing in the first place? It just wasn’t reasonable. Except once started doing it, it really did look better. And
it was faster. And I suddenly couldn’t see the reason for those two spaces in the first place. Because when it came right down to it this was a particular party I was just as happy to join. Those two spaces left erroneously in documents now tend to…irritate me. They’re disjointed, they’re bumpy, they’re unattractive, and they are distracting. Because they’re wrong, they’re just wrong!

So stop spacing twice between sentences, get out of the habit now. Believe me, your readers, your future editors, and your thumb will thank you. After all, it needs all the help it can get, what with all that texting and gaming…

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, fess up, how many times does your thumb hit the space bar? What do your students think? Discuss, write about it, and share.

Good Distractions

Distraction: something providing entertainment or amusement, especially something that takes the mind
off work or worries and helps relaxation

Now here’s another definition of a distraction that, while basically meaning the same thing, has a much nicer spin to it.

This particular distraction positively invites you in, offers you a comfy chair, some sort of beverage and no guilt trip. I agree with this one that distraction does not have to be a bad thing. As long as the distraction isn’t so distracting that one forgets to go
back to the thing from which distraction was desperately needed.

I recently became an aficionado—if a woefully inept one—of Angry Birds. Yes, I know I’m pathetically behind the times but I refuse to apologize because distractions are indeed my enemy. I am a distractaphobe–a word I created that means I don’t allow myself to veer off course unless forced to. I am rarely happier than when I’m accomplishing things and can beat up on myself quite severely when I feel that I’ve ended the day without meeting my goals. Except I will admit to enjoying a few moments here and there of the entirely mindless distraction of Angry Birds. I’m not good at it, don’t anticipate getting much better but I don’t care. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and yes, it’s distracting! The good kind.

We created Grammar Punk with something similar in mind–grammar is boring. It shouldn’t be, it must not be. But it is. The problem is that it has no built-in distractions to it. It’s just a lot of rules and stuff to remember. Wrong! Grammar is about writing and there’s nothing boring about that! Thus Grammar Punk was born–and there’s nothing boring about it. Check us out at www.grammarpunk.com

Teachers of English tell us about your “good” distractions. Ask your students. Then share!

Heavens To Murgatroyd!

I work with a very nice lady who has a delightfully quirky way of exhibiting pique that does not involve profanity. Among my favorite of her expressions that include gems like “Geezo-Beezo”, “Cheese and Rice” and “Good grief”, is the inimitable “Heavens to Murgartroyd.”

Now this is an expression I think I’ve been aware of since I was a child and once I began researching it, it seems I was right.

‘Heavens to Murgatroyd’ is American in origin and dates from the mid 20th century. The expression was popularized by the cartoon character Snagglepuss – a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960s, and is a variant of the earlier ‘heavens to Betsy’.

The first use of the phrase wasn’t by Snagglepuss, (a pink mountain lion!) but actually comes from the 1944 film Meet the People.
It was spoken by Bert Lahr, best remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Snagglepuss’s voice was patterned on Lahr’s, along with the ‘heavens to Murgatroyd’ line.

Which is certainly more than you necessarily needed to know about this obscure expression. And I couldn’t find the etymology
of murgatroyd and have no clue where or what or who it might be referring to. Which doesn’t really matter because it’s a catchy, if goofy little phrase that must not be absented from our lexicons.

So the next time you slam your finger in a drawer don’t let fly with a more mundane expletive, let loose with a hearty, “Heavens
to Murgatroyd!” You’ll feel better for it, I promise.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, try this exercise on your students. Challenge them to make up their own unprofanities. Then insert them into a sentence. Then share!

The Mad Hatter goes without saying. I particularly love this one and am especially fascinated by one of its etymology that harkens back to the unfortunate practice of using mercury in the making of hatbands…

The character is actually Hatta, the Hatter. Carroll never actually refers to him as The Mad Hatter. The Cheshire Cat refers to the Hatter and the March Hare as mad but this can be a highly subjective term.

The Hatter and the March Hare are seated at a nearly ubiquitous teas session because the Queen of Hearts (we’ll get to her later) sentenced him to death for “murdering the time” or wasting her time, as it were. Time halts himself and keeps the Hatter and the March Hare stuck at 6:00 forever.

None of which really explains the whole “mad as a hatter thing” except for the way stories evolve over time and we attach familiar or significant terminology to beloved stories.

Making hats used to be a fairly hazardous occupation as the hatbands indoctrinated use of highly toxic mercury, hence the term mad hatter. The fact that the Hatter does not exhibit in the slightest the symptoms of mercury poisoning, which include “excessive
timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive is apparently neither here nor there. The Mad Hatter he has evolved, the Mad Hatter he remains. Just ask Johnny Depp.

Teachers of grammar, English and writing, there is no better jumping off point for writers than Alice and her Adventures. The characterization is quite literally priceless and well worth studying as students create their own Wonderlands. So, set them to
writing. Then share with us!