Skip to main content

Words of the Day No. 4

Note: I will be away today watching my daughter's first regatta, and I'm excited, although the weather is crappy in Ohio--the whole state is windy and cold and rainy. So while I'm out sitting in the inclement elements, here--have some words. Use them in sentences, or better yet, use them all in one big sentence.

Words I Like:

  • Folderol
  • Lackadaisical
  • Blustery
  • Shrill
  • Alabaster
  • Embellish

Words I Can't Abide:

  • Squash
  • Data--regardless of how it's pronounced

Comments

Sassy Sundry said…
Regatta is fun to say. The weather sucks here too. I'm just glad that my car didn't fall apart today.
dive said…
My, you do set some difficult tasks!

Oh, well; here goes: la-di-dah, folderol, and so on; there's a shrill and blustery wind whipping up the trees outside my window, but I'm feeling too lackadaisical to go for a bracing walk, so I shall just embellish this alabaster (well, not so much alabaster as marble) urn with the last of the wind-torn flowers from the garden.

All true, as well.

Hope the elements don't leave you too battered at the regatta.
Sassy Sundry said…
One of my favorite Pavement songs has the lyric, "She's so lackadaisical, could have been a West Coast bride...."

It's a blustery day here, and my neighbors are shrill. I'll embellish my comments and say that my counter is alabaster; it is just folderol anyhoo.
How did the ragatta go?? It was cold and very wet here in new england as wll but now it's warmed up a bit and the rain has let up as well.

As far as your words.. I didn't feel like doing "homework" today ;)
Scout said…
Dive and Sassy, nice sentences. I have to confess that I didn't even bother trying to connect my word list. Thank you for not using the bad words.

Rich, did you kill another mouse? I haven't made the site rounds yet. I'll got see.

All, the regatta was fascinating...I just backspaced over a couple of sentences because I'm going write about it later with a few pictures. See you then :)

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...