Wordy Blog
Disorder of a Man of Letters — Xah Belles-lettres
time to read The Masque of the Red Death
todo.
shibboleth
A shibboleth (/ˈʃɪbəlɛθ, -ɪθ/ (About this soundlisten)) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats.
[2020-02-23 Wikipedia Shibboleth]
darkness of humanity series
extol, exalt
Swearing and Long Live Latin
One thing i noticed with swearing (me), is that, it tends to reduce quality in discussion. On the other hand, the other extreme of euphemism, such as today we have by politicians and twitter and google etc public relations department, gets us direct lie and fakenews.
[Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language By Nicola Gardini (Author), Todd Portnowitz (Translator). At Buy at amazon ]
There's actually a chapter in Long Live Latin analyzing the swearing of catullus. It's first person, singular imperative and strongly connected to statements about truth. You can't swear for someone else. [from George Jones https://twitter.com/eludom/status/1224632535730225157]
milen gen don't read these classics much anymore, do they?
like Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, Jack London, Hemingway, etc.
xah peddles classics for survival. you BUY at amazon to make classics great again
- Charles Dickens Collection Boxed Set Buy at amazon
- Jane Austen Collection, Slip case Buy at amazon
- War and Peace by Tolstoy Buy at amazon
- War and Peace (3 Volume Set) Hardcover – Box set Buy at amazon
let the etymologies seep into u, so that when u write, the diction smells flower.
recalcitrant, incorrigible, now i need to find the etymology of crackpot
“mentally unbalanced person,” 1898, probably from crack (v.) + pot (n.1) in a slang sense of “head.” Compare crack-brain “crazy fellow” (late 16c.). Earlier it was used in a slang sense “a small-time big-shot” (1883), and by medical doctors in reference to a “metallic chinking sometimes heard when percussion is made over a cavity which communicates with a bronchus.”
[etymology of crackpot https://www.etymonline.com/word/crackpot]
let the etymologies seep into u, so that when u write, the diction smells flower. --xah dictum of the day.
effect of sketchy knowledge of history may be drastically different than in depth
(on prev topic of history) i think knowledge of history is interesting in that, knowing a sketch or overview may be drastically different than knowing in depth. e.g. i think most college educated American would know the first few paragraphs of us history of Wikipedia. But, that's really just a outline. I think you get very different feelings and thoughts and behavior, if one know US history in depth.
western brain, a constrast of 2 styles
The Tragedy Of Titus Andronicus
annotated by Xah Lee, Professor of Philology, University of Bovine, USA.
ancient philosophies
ancient Chinese philosophies, hundred flowers bloom.
which school are you?
- US conservatives hawks would be Legalism, and School Of Military (The Art of War).
- Communists would be Agrarianism.
- Green and Cali hippies would be Yin-yang school naturalists.
Lots to read. Am only familiar with chinese and greek (much of whitemen's brain). But other major are indian and islamic or middle east. Indian am somewhat familiar too, cuz buddhism.
currently working to remove all links to wikipedia on that page
currently working on that page to remove all links to wikipedia
Why? because, time's changed. Now everyone knows wikip and use it. So much so that young people find knowledge trite and don't even bother. 2nd reason is wikipedia donation is corrupt. Search xah lee never donate to wikipedia. 3rd reason. I no longer want to link to wikip. In part, it has become a thought well, manipulated by pol interests.
imbibed at his mother's knee
the emoji dilemma
Am thinking, gonna adopt a messaging style sans emoji. Express via the rich heritage of human animal lang sans the debilitating faak of the pol ridden tracking plush tech of the weabo jargon emoji faak of the ignoramuses n technoheads.
though, to be sure, online instant messaging is a new way of human communication beginning in the year of our lord 1980s, and in this channel of expression, it seems to me, traditional writing system n style is lacking, and emoji feels a void.
to wit, a ♥ onscreen at the right moment, is more effective implicit than any explicit verbiage.
Now in bed. Random browsing before sleep. Feeling sad sometimes, when running into math, the depth, or success stories. Am like, what am i doing, with idiotic youtube stream, or petty tutorials here and there.
Counter:
The Futility of Wisdom
- I, the Preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.
- And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.
- I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.
- What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted.
- I said to myself, “Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”
- And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind.
- Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
(Ecclesiastes 1:12, NASB)
王偁 《酥乳》
一双明月贴胸前，紫禁葡萄碧玉圆；夫婿调酥绮窗下，金茎几点露珠悬。
Korean Vocabulary Book: A Topic Based Approach 1st Edition Buy at amazon
A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ DIF-thong or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/ DIP-thong; from Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally “double sound” or “double tone”), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most varieties of English, the phrase no highway cowboys /ˌnoʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/ has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.
[2019-12-28 Wikipedia]
how to pronounce German Umlaute ö ü?
Aug 2, 2015
lingoni GERMAN
Burn After Writing
dunno the book. interesting blurb.
good dictionary
i tend to use https://www.thefreedictionary.com/fornication or https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fornication but i haven't been examing online dictionaries for ~7 years.
basically, i look for
- has definition from American Heritage Dictionary
- has synonyms on the same page
- has human recording of pronunciation (not synthesized)
- use IPA for pronunciation
- if it's abridged, like the Merriam-Webster site, it's shit.
- if it's “learner's dictionary” (where they explain instead define), it's shit.
how to live to 150 but stay 30? Answer: suffer hunger and the elements.
scientists say
Dec 14, 2019
Veritasium
history of Volapük
currently digging into the history of Volapük
beginning to feel that all constructed langs r a pop dream of idealists, n power struggle, like, linux n open source
valopuk became fractured and failed. so did loglang/lojban. similar in fsf/opensource and linux distros. when natural reward is removed or forbidden, such as money, people struggle for fame (which indirectly generates money)
The Story of the Tower of Babel, Or, How Ancient People Regards Languages
Tinian island
this is the island that the bomber flew off to Hiroshima in 1945-08-06
sleep/asleep, sexual/asexual
sleep/asleep, sexual/asexual. linguistical conflict that is English. a un in. quasi pseudo semi.
senary, heximal, seximal
apparently, the etymology of senary, heximal, seximal, none shows in the online etymology dict https://www.etymonline.com/word/senary
any got access to OED? lol. we need to know the etymology of senary heximal seximal
fake cheese, processed cheese
Fake cheese. Called processed cheese. Emultifiers
i used to eat and love the Kraft Singles. Never much real cheese, cuz to me the Kraft singles are nice wrapped and why bother with others when you have to cut and more expensive. Till i was told, those are not cheese. Those are half cheese with emulsifiers. Since, i never eat Kraft stuff. Eat real cheese instead.
the “emulsifiers” is so it can melt “nicely”.
am telling here so you all, can never eat kraft singles again. ☺
choke, not chock
Alan Watts. Brit philosopher into Buddhism
also a drunk
Feb 10, 2019
The Ten Minute Bible Hour
etymology of hash
1650s, “to hack, chop into small pieces,” from French hacher “chop up” (14c.), from Old French hache “ax” (see hatchet). Hash browns (1926) is short for hashed browned potatoes (1886), with the -ed omitted, as in mash potatoes. The hash marks on a football field were so called by 1954, from their similarity to hash marks, armed forces slang for “service stripes on the sleeve of a military uniform” (1909), which supposedly were called that because they mark the number of years one has had free food (that is, hash (n.1)) from the Army; but perhaps there is a connection with the noun form of hatch (v.2).
[etymology of hash https://www.etymonline.com/word/hash]
History of the World: Every Year
Ollie Bye
Published on Dec 16, 2015
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
— Emily Dickinson
etymology of sophomore
1680s, “student in the second year of university study,” literally “arguer,” altered from sophumer (1650s, from sophume, archaic variant form of sophism), probably by influence of folk etymology derivation from Greek sophos “wise” + mōros “foolish, dull” (see moron). The original reference might be to the dialectic exercises that formed a large part of education in the middle years. At Oxford and Cambridge, a sophister (from sophist with spurious -er as in philosopher) was a second- or third-year student (what Americans would call a “junior” might be a senior sophister).
[etymology of sophomore https://www.etymonline.com/word/sophomore]
atavism: 1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence. #xahwords
your tits are falling off, your dick feel numb.
Fall of Constantinople
Spain accent of English (video at bottom) https://phys.org/news/2019-06-property.html the article is science on new discovery of Light Torque via @jeremiah on noagendasocial.com
etymology of Latin
Latin (adj.)
Old English latin “in Latin,” from Latin Latinus “Latin, Roman, in Latin,” literally “belonging to Latium,” the region of Italy around Rome, a name of uncertain origin.
Latin (n.)
“the language of the (ancient) Romans,” Old English latin “Latin, the language of the Romans; any foreign language,” from Latin latinium “the Latin language,” noun use of the adjective latinius (see Latin (adj.)). The more common form in Old English was læden, from Vulgar Latin *ladinum, which probably was deformed by influence of Old English leoden “language.” For “the Latin language” Old English also had lædenspræc.
[etymology of latin https://www.etymonline.com/word/latin]
precocious
this young girl (soph) is amazing. the word is, precocious.
soph
Published on Apr 3, 2018
hummus and midterranean
am eating hummus. it's popular in mid east and midterranean. this is midterranean.
Word of the day: Neurosis
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 with the publication of DSM III. It is still used in the ICD-10 Chapter V F40–48.
Neurosis should not be mistaken for psychosis, which refers to a loss of touch with reality. Neither should it be mistaken for neuroticism, a fundamental personality trait proposed in the Big Five personality traits theory.
Symptoms and causes
There are many different neuroses: obsessive–compulsive disorder, obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, impulse control disorder, anxiety disorder, hysteria, and a great variety of phobias.
According to C. George Boeree, professor emeritus at Shippensburg University, the symptoms of neurosis may involve:
... anxiety, sadness or depression, anger, irritability, mental confusion, low sense of self-worth, etc., behavioral symptoms such as phobic avoidance, vigilance, impulsive and compulsive acts, lethargy, etc., cognitive problems such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, repetition of thoughts and obsession, habitual fantasizing, negativity and cynicism, etc. Interpersonally, neurosis involves dependency, aggressiveness, perfectionism, schizoid isolation, socio-culturally inappropriate behaviors, etc.[1]
[2019-04-30 Wikipedia Neurosis]
Easter Worshippers
Easter Worshippers. what a curious phrase. i've never heard of it neither.
Published on Apr 22, 2019
Kim Iversen, a newcomer i found on youtube.
Published on Apr 22, 2019
Dai Woman, in Yunnan, China
The Dai people (Kam Mueang: ᩱᨴᩭ; Thai: ไท; Shan: တႆး [tai˥˩]; Tai Nüa: ᥖᥭᥰ, [tai˥], Chinese: 傣族; pinyin: Dǎizú) are one of several ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture (both in southern Yunnan, China), but by extension, the term can apply to groups in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar when Dai is used to mean specifically Tai Yai, Lue, Chinese Shan, Tai Dam, Tai Khao or even Tai in general. For other names, please see the table below.
[2019-04-11 Wikipedia]
very interesting short video on linguistics, by professor Benjamin Slade (long time emacs user and TeX) http://slade.jnanam.net/
𝔅𝔢𝔬𝔴𝔲𝔩𝔣 𝔦𝔰 𝔞𝔫 𝔒𝔩𝔡 𝔈𝔫𝔤𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔥 𝔢𝔭𝔦𝔠 𝔭𝔬𝔢𝔪 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔬𝔣 3,182 𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔳𝔢 𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔰. ℑ𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔞𝔯𝔤𝔲𝔞𝔟𝔩𝔶 𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔪𝔬𝔰𝔱 𝔦𝔪𝔭𝔬𝔯𝔱𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔨𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔒𝔩𝔡 𝔈𝔫𝔤𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔥 𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔢. 𝔡𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔡 1000. 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔞𝔲𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔯 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔞𝔫 𝔞𝔫𝔬𝔫𝔶𝔪𝔬𝔲𝔰 𝔄𝔫𝔤𝔩𝔬-𝔖𝔞𝔵𝔬𝔫 𝔭𝔬𝔢𝔱, 𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔯𝔢𝔡 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔶 𝔰𝔠𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔞𝔯𝔰 𝔞𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔢 “𝔅𝔢𝔬𝔴𝔲𝔩𝔣 𝔭𝔬𝔢𝔱”.
history of USA
The history of the United States, a country in North America, began with the settlement of Indigenous people before 15,000 BC. Numerous cultures formed. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the year of 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies formed after 1600. By the 1760s, thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of new taxes after 1765, rejecting the colonists' argument that new taxes needed their approval (see Stamp Act 1765). Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party (1773), led to punitive laws by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts.
Armed conflict began in 1775. In 1776 in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress declared the independence of the colonies as the United States of America. Led by General George Washington, it won the Revolutionary War with large support from France. The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River (except Canada and Florida). The Articles of Confederation established a central government, but it was ineffectual at providing stability, as it could not collect taxes and had no executive officer. A convention in 1787 wrote a new Constitution that was adopted in 1789. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. With Washington as the first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief adviser, a strong central government was created. Purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 doubled the size of the United States. A second and final war with Britain was fought in 1812, which solidified national pride.
Encouraged by the notion of manifest destiny, U.S. territory expanded all the way to the Pacific coast. While the United States was large in terms of area, its population in 1790 was only 4 million. However, it grew rapidly, reaching 7.2 million in 1810, 32 million in 1860, 76 million in 1900, 132 million in 1940, and 321 million in 2015. Economic growth in terms of overall GDP was even greater. However compared to European powers, the nation's military strength was relatively limited in peacetime before 1940. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit from the institution, mostly from production of cotton. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery.
Seven Southern slave states rebelled and created the foundation of the Confederacy. Its attack of Fort Sumter against the Union forces started the Civil War (1861–1865). Confederate defeat led to the impoverishment of the South and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction Era (1863–1877), legal and voting rights were extended to freed slaves. The national government emerged much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white Democrats regained their power in the South in 1877, often by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, and new disfranchising constitutions that prevented most African Americans and many poor whites from voting. This continued until gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and passage of federal legislation to enforce constitutional rights were made.
The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the Northeast and Midwest and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed and large-scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Mass dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s, which led to many reforms including the 16th to 19th constitutional amendments, which brought the federal income tax, direct election of Senators, prohibition, and women's suffrage. Initially neutral during World War I, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 and funded the Allied victory the following year. Women obtained the right to vote in 1920, with Native Americans obtaining citizenship and the right to vote in 1924.
After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs, which included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage. The New Deal defined modern American liberalism. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States entered World War II and financed the Allied war effort and helped defeat Nazi Germany in the European theater. Its involvement culminated in using newly invented nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities to defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific theater.
The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers in the aftermath of World War II. During the Cold War, the two countries confronted each other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, proxy wars, and propaganda campaigns. The purpose of this was to stop the spread of communism. In the 1960s, in large part due to the strength of the Civil Rights Movement, another wave of social reforms was enacted by enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African-Americans and other racial minorities. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union was officially dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States as the world's only superpower.
After the Cold War, the United States has been focusing on modern conflicts in the Middle East and nuclear programs in North Korea. The beginning of the 21st century saw the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda in 2001, which was followed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, the United States had its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, which was followed by slower-than-usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.
Russian Girl Speaks rrrrr
A Encompassing Travelog on the City of Sin New York, New York Las Vegas Travelog: New York, New York
todo remove links to wordy-english.blogspot.com
todo http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordy-english/
todo 2019-03-16 remove the ruby annotation. example: file:///Users/xah/web/wordyenglish_com/lit/chinese_ba1_mian4_ling2_long2.html
Allograph, Variant of the Letter s = ſ and Integral Sign ∫ (repost)
don't use euphemism (fake words).
- STEM → just say science/engineering, or science/math, etc.
- homophobia → just say hate gays.
- misogyny → hate women.
- islamophobe → hate islam.
- human being → human animal.
- when you use understandable words, sophistry breaks down.
languages of India
first, sate ye hunger. then, sate thy lust. that's today's #xahwords u subscribe http://wordyenglish.com/lit/blog.html i prescribe
china girls wresting show
this book is recommended to me
The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer Buy at amazon
todo. review. work in progress
whether or not you dunno
常用汉字 Most Used Chinese Chars (new)
Chinese Character Styles 汉字字体风格 (rewritten)
and new nav box.
Chinese Medicine Food
year 2009. I was blogging Bertrand Russell's essays.
linguistics: the term e-sport
in the past decade, arises e-sport. i.e. video game competition. The term e-sport is idiotic. It formed for marketing reasons. e.g. make teen feel elite, like athletes. Secondly, vid competition is not constructive activity, but, not worse than say movies and actors.
context. ★ gamers in korea https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1081092868931010560
- Anne Rice's Vampire and Sleeping Beauty
- Google Shutdown its Dictionary Service
- Oscar Wilde's Tomb and Quips
- “The Autumn Of The Patriarch” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- 高级程序员装逼指南 (Zhuangbility Manual)
- The Writ of My Heart
- Chinese Linguistics: 奇葩異草, 百卉千葩
- Chinese Phrase: Dripping Beauty 娇艳欲滴
- 八面玲珑, 玲珑是啥?
- Chinese Fonts Comparison; 中文字體比較
- Chinese Fonts on Windows Mac Linux
- Comparison of Chinese Fonts Displaying English 中文字體比較 显示英文
- Chinese Language Style of Analogy: 有一種前進叫拐彎
- English Convention of Capitalization in Titles
- The History of English in 10 Minutes, Annotated
- Movie “300” and Battle of Thermopylae
- Google Glass Dating, and History in Downton Abbey
- The Hunger Games, and Highbrowism of The New Yorker: hobbesian, dystopian, epicene, courtier, cosseted
- Direct vs Indirect Use of Language (Steven Pinker Talk)
- Movie: The Man From Earth
- Omni-Powers, Omni-Fantasy
- Piraha Language and Crackpot, Academician as Charlatan
- Rhetorical Modes (Just Say: Writing Styles)
- Sum of Angles of Triangle on Girl's Chest; 妹子，在你胸前随便画个三角形…
- Poem: The Bell Tolls for Thee; 鐘為汝鳴
- World Literature Classics; Thoughts Extempore
Phantasmagoria of Flower View 東方花映塚