Words of Week 8

Excruciating: Extremely painful; causing intense suffering; unbearably distressing; torturing
Evangelical: Marked by ardent or zealous enthusiasm for a cause
Amalgam: A mixture or combination
Animadversion: The act of criticizing.
Annihilate: To reduce to utter ruin or nonexistence
Ubiquitous: Existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time;
Suave: Charming, confident, and elegant.
Bauble: A showy and usually cheap ornament

The Case of Suspicious Blogviews

She looked at her screen with a bemused face. The stats she was seeing suggested various theories, but the one to weigh the strongest was that a Russian school teacher had found her blog, liked the Lexicon! page, and assigned a writing assignment the next day to her students using all the words from different weeks. It seemed plausible, because the separate posts haven't gotten only one view, but two views per page, maybe suggesting the teacher wanted them to work in pairs. 

Or maybe she thought, this new discoverer was a logophile like herself, in constant search of new words to use, to learn, to nurture. Maybe she was part of a little secret group of logophiles and she was happy because she had found a member on the other side of the world. Maybe, the blogger thought, I will shortly receive an email asking me to join the Unpublished Word Lovers Group...

--

I ain't deducing to this.

Lots of purple scarves

-Belle

Words of Week 7

Allude: Mention without discussing at length
Egregious: Outrageously bad
Precocious: Having developed certain abilities or proclivities at an earlier age than usual.
Soliloquy: An act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers
Dogmatic: Asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated.
Languor: The state or feeling, often pleasant, of tiredness or inertia
Eclat: Brilliance of success, reputation, etc
Penultimate: Last but one in a series of things; second last

Words of Week 6

Hypergraphia: The driving compulsion to write; the overwhelming urge to write. Hypergraphia may compel someone to keep a voluminous journal, to jot off frequent letters to the editor, to write on toilet paper if nothing else is available, and perhaps even to compile a dictionary. Hypergraphia is the opposite of writer's block.
Incessant:(of something regarded as unpleasant) Continuing without pause or interruption
Elocution: The skill of clear and expressive speech, esp. of distinct pronunciation and articulation.
Notoriety: The state of being known for some unfavorable act or quality
Incredulous: (of a person or their manner) Unwilling or unable to believe something
Benediction: The utterance or bestowing of a blessing
Voracious: Wanting or devouring great quantities of food

Charms in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 180 pages

"'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life."

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

"Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply."

"But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires."

"Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."

"There must have been moments event hat afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion."

"One thing's sure and nothing's surer / The rich get richer and the poor get-/ Children"

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."

"The lawn and drive has been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption – and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye."

"She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand."

"There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind."

"If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream."

"They were careless people – Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Words of Week 5

Indignant: Feeling, characterized by, or expressing strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive,insulting, or base
Trilemma: A situation, analogous to a dilemma, in which there are three almost equally undesirable alternatives
Incredulous: Indicating or showing unbelief 
Shrewd: Astute or sharp in practical matters
Poignant: Keenly distressing to the feelings
Conscientious: Controlled by or done according to one's inner sense of what is right; governed by conscience
Tantalizing: Having or exhibiting something that provokes or arouses expectation, interest, or desire, especially that which remains unobtainable or beyond one's reach:
Diffident: Lacking self-confidence; timid; shy

Aspire to Inspire

In a recent class discussion about how we should live our lives, and whether we should strive for remembrance after our deaths or not, I had a philosophical epiphany. ( I am not sure if that's what it would be called but I though those two words sounded intellectual together )

Some of us wanted to live lives and be remembered afterwards, some of us wanted to live lives they enjoyed and not care much about remembrance since after death it wouldn't do them much good.

I thought, if I aim for the moon, I have a chance of landing on the stars. I would like to be remembered for the good things I have done, for the good books I have written, for the movements I have started and at the same time enjoy the life I had. If I pursue my passions, I will enjoy life and have a positive impact on society.

And maybe, I won't be the best writer, or the best artist. Maybe I won't be able to compose a classic piece, or find the cure for cancer. But I could aspire to inspire. Maybe I won't do all the amazing things myself, but maybe I will be able to touch the hearts of future best-seller writers, painters, musicians. Maybe their inspiration will be I.

And maybe, my name won't be printed in books, or mentioned for prizes, but my soul will reach a state of ataraxia. And that should be enough. After all, the star I land on may not present the same view as the moon, but it will be the star people at the moon admire.

Lots of dolls,
-Belle

Words of Week 4

Logophile: One who loves words
Misconstrue: Get a wrong or false impression
Eutony: The pleasantness of a word's sound
Resplendent: Richly colorful, bright, attractive
Wanderlust: Strong desire to travel
Offing: The more distant part of the sea seen from the shore, beyond anchoring ground
Evanesce: To disappear, fade away, vanish

Tolerance.

"I think we need to tolerate each other's religions and beliefs."

I know I use a lot of words in my posts, but it is only because words trigger my brain to connect points and analyse my life. Since coming to the U.S. I have heard the phrase "religious toleration" more than I had to. It bothered me that people have to be reminded to be "tolerant" of others' religions. What does tolerate mean anyway? According to Google, the definition is "allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference."

Why tolerate? Why not respect, or appreciate, or recognize, or acknowledge? Why tolerate?

I have a religion, you have a religion, you don't have a religion, whatever. We should tolerate each other? NO. Instead, we should respect each other. We should appreciate the diversity we are exposed to. We should recognize the different belief systems. We should acknowledge that by having different views and perspectives, we can achieve more together. We shouldn't tolerate each other, we should be thankful for our differences, and treasure them. 

For me, respect is something every human being deserves. No matter how different a person might be, I need to respect them because they are human, and they need to respect me in return because I, too, am human. We need mutual respect in this world, not mutual tolerance. 

Tolerance is offensive. Tolerance is when my baby brother won't stop crying, but I have to endure it because I have no way of getting rid of it. Tolerance is that endurance. I don't want anyone to think like that about me, or my religion. I don't want to be someone people dislike, and practice a religion that is misjudged. I want respect, not tolerance.

Lots of lemons,
-Belle