Confessions of a Word Lush by James Harbeck

Author:James Harbeck [Harbeck, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

02

and the vowels easily transformed one to another, /a/ to /a 6A /

and /e/ and, in English, /e/ to /i/ – just getting more and more steeped. Every language that I’m aware of that has a word for ‘tea’ bases the word on one of those three streams: cha, chai, te . But the relation isn’t obvious to most non-linguists.”

“It still doesn’t excuse the redundancy,” Margot said.

“Redundancy is often a good idea for clarity,” I said. “I too find chai tea a little grating, but I understand why they do it –

they need to specify that it’s tea, for those who don’t know, and at the same time the word chai has a specificity and that nice bit of the exotic that spiced wouldn’t.”

“And the latte for the milk,” Daryl said.

Jess arrived with the beverages. “Wallah!” she said, setting down Daryl’s chai.

“That’s voilà ,” said Margot.

“No,” said Daryl, “that’s the chai wallah.”

plank

As I was walking down the street, I encountered Marcus Brattle, my adolescent mentee. “Brilliant!” he exclaimed (that’s British for “Great!”). He pulled out a camera. “You came along at just the right time.”

I looked at him warily. “You have plans?” His plans typically translated into disasters or messes, often involving humiliation, sometimes mine.

“I’m the plan king!” He said. “In fact, I’m planking!”

Oh. The faddishness of youth. “Planking?” I said, disingenuously.

“Is that short for public wanking ?”

“Get over it,” he said. He pointed to one of Toronto’s newly installed racks of bike-share cycles, nearby on the sidewalk.

“I’m going to extend myself like a plank across two of those bikes there, and you’re going to photograph it so I can post it.”

“Haven’t people gotten board of that fad yet?”

“It’s planks for the memories,” Marcus said. “People have planked on some remarkable things and in some remarkable places.”

“And fallen to some remarkable deaths,” I said. “It’s all just plankton for the whale of media fads.”

“It’s the exploratory spirit.”

“Sort of like a negative of spelunking,” I observed. “Going up and over instead of down and under. We get a spree of planking followed by spill and plunking. One might come to imagine that plunk is the past tense of plank .”

“Where does that leave plonk , then?”

“ Plonk is cheap wine,” I said. “Possibly a play on vin blanc , though people do hear in it the sound of a cork being pulled or a bottle being, well, plonked on a table.”

“Onomatopoeia followed by I’m-a-gotta-pee-a,” Marcus said. It occurred to me that he had learned much from me, but probably not the right things. “And you can plink the glasses.”

“I don’t think anyone actually uses plink that way – for that it’s clink , but tiddly-winks and musical instruments do plink.”

“And where’s plenk ?”

“There is no plenk . It’s plink, plank, plonk, plunk .”

“All based on sounds,” Marcus said. “After all, when you drop a plank on the floor, that’s the sound it makes: plank! ”

It does, I thought. However… “Actually, the word comes to us by way of various French versions – modern French has planche –

originally from Latin, probably related to plana , flat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.