Obloquy

Hello,

Clomantagh Castle, Kilkenny, Ireland

This week’s word (brought to you slightly late because I was fooling around at Clomantagh Castle last weekend) is obloquy (pronunciation here “ob-luh-qui”). It means invective, verbal abuse, vitriol, vituperation, imprecate, slur, and fulmination. It again prompts a query about why we have so many words of abuse and anger in the English language. I just don’t see the same level of creative word-invention when it comes to saying something good about someone.

But whatever the reason, we’re rather good at heaping obloquy on those we dislike and now at least you know the term for that action.

The word dates from the 15th century (much like that castle, restored by the Irish Landmark Trust) and comes from Latin/French/Middle English roots of ob meaning against and loqui – meaning to speak.

I hope you’re not the victim of obloquy this week. Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling instead.

Grace

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Ireland is Full of Follies

Hello,

This week’s word is folly. I have always loved architectural follies and this blog is dedicated to fools, or more specifically word-fools, so follies fit here.

Folly (pronounced foll-ee) is a noun meaning 1. foolishness or foolish actions and 2. a useless, extravagant structure. Sadly the grounds of my own garden are far too small for such an edifice. I don’t have the resources of the Victorian estate owners who constructed them to create a focal point for their gardens. But I’ve been lucky enough to encounter many follies in my travels. The grounds of the former Guinness house in St. Anne’s Park, Raheny wasn’t too far from my childhood home and I loved the classical follies along the stream there. In fact they are planning a follies trail there in what is now a large public park.

Spire of Lloyd

I also studied the nearby Casino at Marino in art class at school. It’s accessible by guided tour only but is worth a trip if you’re in Dublin. Every time I visit my in-laws  in Cavan we drive past my personal favourite – the inland lighthouse, the Spire of Lloyd at Kells. Built to provide a landmark for the returning hunt it sometimes has a beam from the top to complete the picture.

I’d love to visit the cast-iron biscuit barrel of a tomb which is the Dennis Mausoleum of Clonbern in Co. Galway for it’s sheer oddness. Next weekend I’m off to Kilkenny so I’ll be keeping an eye out for Stroan Fountain and its oddly spherical enclosed stone fountain on the way. I also yearn to see the island mini-fort of Gibraltar in the gardens of LarchHill, Co. Kildare.

The Follies Trust say that follies are joyful little buildings that aim to please. I think we need more of them and should rejoice in the ones we have. They are quirky, architecturally fun, and enhance the landscape. It’s claimed that Ireland has more follies per square mile than anywhere else in the world and that makes me ridiculously proud. Have a look at their website for a small selection of photos of follies they’ve visited/restored – places like the pyramid in Co. Mayo, or the Jealous Wall at Belvedere House Mullingar (it is really very convincing in real life).

May your week be full of follies,

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace

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Kith and Kin

Hello,

Inspiration for today’s words comes, with thanks, from Muriel (a.k.a Mamo) who is a fellow ML (organiser) for NaNoWriMo in Ireland.

Kith is defined as acquaintances, friends, neighbours, and relations. Whereas kin is defined as as relationships via blood, marriage, adoption, or family. There is also the concept of kindred which can mean that you share a passion for something. I think writers are all kindred in some form or other. I love that “kin” includes adoptive relationships. That seems right to me.

Now when you say kith and kin you will actually know there’s a difference!

In other news this week – I have to extend a thank you to Millfield Shopping Centre where I won their Christmas Stocking contest – lots of vouchers for their shops. Excellent timing as I’d spent myself to standstill on Christmas gifts and now I get something for me.

Also, did you know there’s a new writing retreat in the Dublin Mountains? Carousel Creates is a small centre which hosts weekly writing classes as well as one and two day retreats (residential and non) and it has definitely gone on my wishlist for 2013. At the moment they are running a contest to win a spot on one of their retreats.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace

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Where does “Careen” come from?

Hello,

I’m back from my coastal holiday in the South West of Ireland (meeting a famous dolphin called Fungi in Dingle, crab-fishing in Sneem, and taking a tiny car-ferry to Valentia Island) and in the mood for something nautical this week.

Careen (pronunciation here) means to sway from side perilously – a drunken cyclist might careen comically through a busy fruit market, for example. But its primary meaning is in relation to boats and ships. To careen a boat means to tip it over to show its hull, generally in order to repair it.

As a reluctant land-lubber myself (thanks to a weakness for motion sickness, even on dry land) I tend to careen myself on the decks of boats, but it was worth taking the sea-sickness tablets for that dolphin and the ferry to the island.

As for the land-based element of our trip – well, I think the view from our tiny stone former-coastguard cottage kept up the nautical theme pretty well…

…and the silence was priceless.

Until next time, happy reading, writing and wordfooling,

Grace

 

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Garlic, onions, and leeks, oh my!

Hello,

Regular readers will have noticed my absence last week. We had a family celebration and then visited Disneyland Paris for a few happy days, so I took the week off from wordfooling.

This week’s words should be familiar to most of you. They’re all members of the allium family of plants – garlic, onion and leeks. Not particularly interesting words to say or hear, I admit. They’re on my mind because I need to harvest the leeks from my garden later today.

However they do have something quirky about them – eating them will rush you toward moral depravity! Not because of your bad breath, but because they incite to anger and excessive licentiousness. This is according to such varied sources as Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and Budha.

I shall never look at the humble leek in quite the same light again.

But it won’t stop me eating them.

So until next time, eat alliums with care and happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace

 

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The Meaning of Quainte

Hello,

It fascinates me how the meaning of a word can change over time. Nice used to mean exact, but is more commonly used to mean pleasant these days, for example. One such word is quaint or quainte. I came across it when reading “The Canterbury Tales” (written in old English) and the glossary said the meaning was “strange” which certainly wasn’t the meaning I knew.

My dictionary tells me that quaint (pronunciation here) is an adjecctive which means “interestingly old-fashioned or odd, curious, whimsical”. Miriam Webster’s online dictionary adds that something quaint is marked by elegant design or is pleasingly unusual.

Perhaps one person’s “strange” is another person’s “pleasingly unusual”?

I certainly encountered plenty of quaintness on my writing retreat to Salterbridge Gatelodge in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford last weekend. It’s a Landmark Trust Ireland property. They restore pieces of unusual architecture which are in danger of disappearing and then rent them out. The rent, and donations, pay for the next restoration project.

I love the idea, having previously stayed in their romantic castle for two, Anne’s Grove, complete with turret stairs and open fire.

Grace at Salterbridge

Salterbridge was the perfect place to hole up and write – there was even an antique writing desk. And it’s not every house that has a hexangonal room in it – I call that quaint.

Even better, it gave me an excuse to drop into The Yarn Room in Ashford on my drive down. I spent a very happy hour in the company of Stephanie there finding lovely yarn, fabric, and ribbons for various crafty projects.

But they do have very quaint birds on very quaint trees in that part of the country…

Quaint birds on a quaint tree

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace

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Dyed in the Wool

Hello,

My mind is on yarn this week as I’ve resumed work on my second novel “Hooked” about a diverse group of crafters aged 7 to 77 (including one ghost) who form a knitting group in a small Irish village. They change their lives and their community in the process.

In one of the chapters the group learn how to use plant dyes to create their own coloured yarn. So it seemed perfect to come across a woolly word, well phrase really, to define this week. Wool that is dyed before it is made into fabric retains its colour better. Hence the expression dyed in the wool – meaning unlikely to change one’s colour, or opinion.

I am a dyed in the wool crafter. I was delighted to spot a sign painted on the gable wall of a shop in Recess, Co. Galway last summer. It read “Beer, books, eggs, marble, wool”. That truly is all one could want to purchase in life!

On the same trip we visited the serenely beautiful Brigit’s Garden near Oughterard, Co. Galway. On this visit there was an art and sculpture exhibition in progress, with visitors being encouraged to vote for a People’s Favourite. Mine was, without a doubt, the witty knitted addition to their stone circle garden. What do you think of it?

A Knitted Henge

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and word fooling,

Grace

 

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A booby, a noddy and a lighthouse

Hello,

I’ve two words to talk about this week, both courtesy of Mr. Charles Darwin and his excellent book “The Voyage of the Beagle” which I read for my 501 Books Reading Challenge. Consider it an apology for my late post this week, due to illness.

A booby (pronounced boo-bee) isn’t just slang for a part of woman’s anatomy, it’s also a sea bird which can be red-footed or blue-footed. I think the blue footed ones are particularly sweet and gormless looking.

A noody (pronoucned nod-ee) isn’t just a foolish person (and here at Wordfoolery would be welcome for that alone), or a popular wooden toy invented by Enid Blyton, but is also a bird. A type of tern, in fact. It comes in black or brown varieties and isn’t nearly as cute as the booby.

Hook Head Lighthouse

In other news this week, I’m back from a weekend trip to Wexford, where I managed to fit in a visit to Hook Head lighthouse, the oldest (or so they claim) operational lighthouse in the world. Having seen the waves around the head on the bright day we visited, I can see why ships have needed a beacon there for the last 800 years. As a major lighthouse fanatic, this was a real treat for me.

Staircase inside Hook Head Lighthouse

The green bar in the middle the lighthouse’s stairwell contains the counterweight of the mechanical system to turn the light (now only used in case of electrical failures). In the old days the keepers had to wind up the weight the full height of the lighthouse every 20 minutes – all day, all night – every day of the year. I didn’t see any noddies or boobies around the lighthouse, unfortunately.

In writing news, I heard this week that the pitch of my novel “The Morning After Service” made the final of the Book Doctor’s 2012 PitchPalooza. I’ve already had my pitch critiqued by them (which was really helpful) and on the 15th of March they will pick one pitch to bring to agents. There’s also a People’s Favourite vote and if you want to vote in that you can do so at the top of this page. Comments/likes don’t count, just votes using the vote  button under the list of authors.

Until next week, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace

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Mythical lands across the Sea

Hello,

I came across the word Ogygia (pronounced Oh-gee-uh) this week while reading. Apparently it’s the island home/exile of Calypso. Now in “Pirates of the Carribbean” she is the rather angry goddess of the sea, but in Greek myths she is the daughter of the Titan called Atlas (yes the one that holds the heavens on his shoulders as punishment for defying Zeus). Odysseus stayed with her for a while during Homer’s “Odyssey”. Some think it’s the island of Gozo in the Mediterrean which I visited many years ago on holiday, but I didn’t spot any goddesses. Others think it may be Atlantis.

Which put me on the track of mythical lands across the sea. They appear to be common to many cultures.

The biggie is Atlantis which supposedly lies at the bottom of the Atlantic. It was probably invented around the time of Plato and even then wasn’t treated as a factual location.

Islands off the West of Ireland

The Irish one is Tir na nOg – the Land of Youth which features in many old stories. Every child is taught the story of Oisin and Tir na nOg in school. Again situated in the West (somewhere in the Atlantic) it was the sort of place that you could live in, but if you visited Ireland again and set foot on the ground, all your postponed years would catch up with you.

Another Irish one (possibly a variant of Tir na nOg) was Hy Brasil – this land could be seen from Ireland on one day in every seven years, but otherwise was shrouded in mist. Anyone who’s seen the many islands off the West coast will see how this could be true! It even appeared on many medieval maps. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with a certain country in South America.

The Isles of the Blessed or St. Brendan’s Island were other mysterious island(s) discovered by St. Brendan on his voyages around the Atlantic, this time off the coast of Africa. St. Brendan, also known as The Navigator, apparently discovered America way before Columbus, or so we Irish like to claim. It has been proven that his type of boat could have made the trip he  described, but we’ll never know for sure. His island again appeared on maps, including those used by Columbus, and the story went that he and his monks stayed five days while the rest of the crew back on the main boat saw the island disppear into mist for a year.

Some of my favourite authors have enjoyed the concept of mythical lands across the sea. The continent of Four Ecks in Terry Pratchett’s work bears a strange ressemblance to Australia and JRR Tolkien had his Elves pass into the West (to Numenor) to a land of peace and perpetual youth. I’ve read that Tolkien intended Numenor as a reference to Atlantis. Both authors spent a great deal of time and effort in mapping their “worlds”, which is impressive in itself. Perhaps the mark of a good fictional land is that readers want to believe that it really exists?

I think it’s very interesting that so many of these islands lay off the misty West of Ireland coast in a huge sea that people struggled to explore. But even though they’re unlikely to exist, I’m glad they exist in our imaginations. We’d all like a secret island to disappear to now and then, right? If you’re curious about the huge list of fictional islands world wide have a look here.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and word fooling,

Grace

 

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Windy Words

Hello,

Hurricane Irene grabbed all the weather headlines recently, but it was the tail-end of Hurricane Katia that caused trouble for me this week. She created 6-10 metre swells on the west coast of Ireland and the ferry to InishBofin for my writing weekend was cancelled (wisely) by the skipper. As a result I won’t be posting any idyllic island images today, sorry.

But the wind, which caused a fair bit of damage to my own garden on the east coast, got me thinking about windy words.

As a child I was delighted to discover that the inventor of the commonly used Beaufort Wind  Scale in 1805, was Irish-born like me, Sir Francis Beaufort. Many thanks to Wikipedia for the following details on how it works which I had forgotten despite learning the indicators as part of my geography studies aged 12. The modern version of the scale used in Ireland and Britain (with some additions for tropical cyclones on the China Sea area) is as follows  -

Zero – calm – smoke rises vertically

1 – light air – ripples without crests

2 – light breeze – leaves rustle

3 – gentle breeze – light flags extended

4 – moderate breeze – whitecaps on waves

5 -fresh breeze – small trees begin to sway

6 – strong breeze – umbrella use becomes difficult and empty rubbish bins (garbage cans) tip over – I love this description!

7 – high wind – effort needed to walk against the wind

8 – gale – cars veer on the road

9 – strong gale – large amounts of seaspray reduce visibility, some tree branches will break

10 – storm – trees broken or uprooted

11 – violent storm – widespread damage to trees and roof-tiles

12- hurricane – huge seas, totally white with waves and spray. Extensive damage to weaker structures like barns, mobile homes etc.

A sombre read, isn’t it? Reminds me of the power of the wind, and wave. The highest up the scale I’ve experienced personally is only 10 and I’m very glad of that. Yesterday, the end of Hurricane Katia, who had dropped to Atlantic storm level came through my village as a puny 7, but she still managed to wrench up a badly planted fruit tree and rip several fruit-laden branches from my tomato-patch.

 

Other windy words you might enjoy weaving into your weather-related small-talk this week include -

zephyr – a soft, gentle breeze

el Nino and la Nina – linked air pressure events in the Pacific which have massive influence on weather patterns globally. Explained here.

draught, gust, puff, squally, tempest, tornado, blustery

Chinook, Mistral, Monsoon, Sirocco and several other famous regional winds identified here.

 

My two final words relate to wind too. Do you know what they mean? Windbag and windjammer.

 

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

And may your umbrella always remain the right way out,

Grace

 

 

 

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