vanquish verbiage
vociferous vocation
virtuoso verve
senryu M. LaFreniere, all rights reserved
Vtks Bandoleones font (letter V) by Douglas Vitkauskas
mom’s typewriter font (poem) by Christoph Mueller
22nd in the A to Z challenge 2019 (almost done. Yay!)
V is another fun letter for words especially since some are about words : verbiage, vociferous, verbal, verbatim, verbose, vernacular, vocabulary and of course verb.
Not surprisingly, it’s because some of these words evolved from the french word “verbe” which means “word.” “Verbe” evolved into the french word “verbeier” which means “to chatter”. So that explains verbiage (n. too many words), verbal, verbatim (adv. adj. exact words), verbose (adj. too many words) and verb
Vociferous (adj. loud person/speech) evolved from the Latin “vox” which means “voice”.
The odd one out is “vernacular” (n. local speech, dialect). You would think it comes from “verbe” too but you would be wrong. This ones comes from the Latin “verna” meaning “slave born in the household” which evolved into “vernaculus” meaning “native”, “domestic”.
Interesting don’t you think? No? Okay.
Today’s words, I knew them all but I never use them. Yes, when I read them, I understand the writer’s intent but I don’t speak with them nor write with them although they are very good words like “verve”. That’s a great word especially for haiku.
The words that pop into my head when I speak or write is probably about 4th or 5th grade English while my reading level is college-level. On the one hand it makes me easy to understand even for many English-as-a-second-language speaker (my mom was one so it’s probably where I go the habit of using simpler English). My students mentioned the ease of understanding me when I taught English in Japan. On the other hand, English is such a rich language, it’s like I’m painting in black and white instead of using the whole palette of colors available.
In a few days the alphabet challenge will be done. As it draws to a close, I don’t know that I want to keep doing the vocabulary haiku everyday (for one thing readership is down) but on the other hand I think it’s been good to remind me to use a greater number of words I do know. I feel I need to up my game in writing. We’ll see what happens when I’m done.
this time I used “vocabulary” as the search term for obvious reasons..
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