Nuts and Bolts: percontation marks.

 This is a percontation mark:

It was invented in 1580, or about then, by Henry Denham (though not named by him) and it signals...well, whatever you want it to signal. Basically, it means what I've just written isn't quite as straightforward as it might appear.

Yes, it's a kind of irony mark. 

You might say that if the percontation mark had been needed then we would already be using it, but perhaps its time has now come. We have a global...um...globe, which means that a lot of people are having to communicate in a second or third language.

A percontation mark could be the written equivalent of that astonishing habit Americans have of saying only joking after they've made a joke. (This is astonishing to an English person because in England practically everything anyone says is likely to be a joke. Even Good morning.)

Having spent most of my life trying to learn to write clearly and amusingly, I feel about the percontation mark the way a portraitist must feel about photographs. 

But I suppose they're better than emojis, #joke, or (!), anyway.

Thing To Consider Today: percontation marks. A percontation is a question which requires more than a yes or no answer. The Oxford dictionaries point the word's English origin to Henry Cockeram in the 1600s. In Latin percontāre means to enquire or interrogate. The word comes from contus, which means, most surprisingly, boat-pole. 

The unicode for the percontation mark is U+2E2E.

Now I just need to find out what unicode is...

Thing Not To Be Today: otiose.

 Otiose is a word one comes across in Victorian novels and never really understands...

...or perhaps that's just me.

Anyway, I've looked it up, now, and otiose has two basic meanings: the commoner one is serving no useful purpose (this is usually to do with people speaking at great length without actually saying very much), but the word can also be used to mean lazy in a disinclined-to-do-anything kind of a way.

As a writer for children, and especially as a writer for people learning to read, I tend to construct my books on a value-per-word basis, but some degree of otiosity is essential to twenty-four hours news channels. It's all too often alive and thriving in Zoom meetings, too.

You know something? I could probably make a fortune with a Zoom-type system which cuts out after sixty minutes.

And an even greater one if it was half an hour.

Thing Not To Be Today: otiose. This word comes from the Latin ōtium, which means leisure.

Spot the Frippet: tin.

 This is easier to spot in Britain, Canada and Australia than in the USA because in those places baked beans come in tins, not cans.

Mind you, a lot of what are called tins aren't actually made of tin - and those that are, have only a very thin coating of tin over a steel structure. But in those cases it's the tin you see.

tin of tea. Photo by Chameleon 

A tinny in Australia and New Zealand is a tin of beer (but this will probably be made of aluminium).

Wriggly tin isn't made of tin, either, being military slang for something most people call corrugated iron (although it's probably made of stainless steel).

photo by Oxyman

A tin whistle is probably made of steel, too.

Anyway, tin is a metal, greyish with a slight yellow tint. If you bend a bar of it, it 'cries' (that is, it makes a soft screaming or crackling noise).

You don't often come across things made of pure tin, but anything made of pewter or bronze (like some coins (tin is slang for money) and large bells) will have some tin in it. So has solder. 

You need tin in the mix to make the pipes of an organ:

organ at Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, in Paris. Photo by Gérard Janot 

and also to make superconducting magnets. Tin goes into toothpaste and pest killers. You get it in lithium batteries.

Oddly, in the light of tin's association with bells and whistles and pipe organs, someone with a tin ear has dubious taste in music. Someone tin-eared may also be someone who upsets people by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The association with bad sounds goes even further, because something tinny makes an annoying sound lacking in resonance - and it will probably be cheap and badly-made, too.

Spot the Frippet: tin. This word has been around in English since before 1000 AD. Some people think it may go back to the Cornish word stean, Cornwall being the main source of tin in ancient times.

Sunday Rest: welfie. Word Not To Use Today.

 A welfie is much the same kind of thing as a selfie or a belfie, and may possibly be all three at once.

Such a triple -elfie, though, would involve taking a photograph of your own bottom while exercising.

Hmm...

...yes, that mght be possible, if not to be recommended on aesthetic, health, taste, or any other grounds.

Still, I suppose such an attempt might end up making some work for a chiropractor.

And even chiropractors have to eat.

Sunday Rest: welfie. A welfie is a photographic self-portrait taken while exercising (which means that welfie posters are smug, as well as boastful). 

The word is made up of the words well and selfie. The word well was wel in Old English, so it's been doing sterling service for over a thousand years.

Saturday Rave: Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope.

 Alexander Pope was vastly unpopular among the gentlemen of the press, and very much loved by his friends.

His family was exiled from London because they were Catholic, and so the young Alexander had largely to teach himself the Greek and Latin that he loved. To add to his difficulties, he contracted tuberculosis of the spine at an early age. This disease left him a hunchback and only four feet six inches tall.

Pope is reckoned to have been the first person in England to have made a living as a writer of literature, and he was (I think) the greatest ever exponent of the heroic couplet. His satire is sharp, and often very funny.

Alexander Pope was no angel. He enjoyed a good feud, and he was well able to survive, and perhaps even relish, the resentment caused by his designating as dunces, in immortal verse, a large proportion of his fellow writers.

This being the case, his Ode to Solitude might come across as rather hypocritical.

But then he did always claim to have written it at the age of twelve.

For myself, I'm rather fond of Alexander Pope.

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

                            In winter fire.

 

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

                            Quiet by day,

 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

                            With meditation.

 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

                            Tell where I lie.

Word To Use Today: meditation. This word looks as if it's made up of different bits, but it's meant the same thing more or less for ever. The Latin meditārī means to reflect upon [something].

Word To Use Today: plexor.

 Plexor sounds like a super-hero, but it's not.

A plexor is a small hammer with a rubber head. It's the thing with which the doctor hits you on the knee to check your reflexes.

photo by Sven Volkens

I've never wanted to be a doctor, but I suppose that is probably one fun bit.

Word To Use Today: plexor. This word comes from the Greek plēxis, a stroke, from plēssein, to strike.

The word plexor has got nothing to do with most other words with plex- in them, like complex, which comes from the Latin plectere, to plait, or complexion, which comes from more or less the same idea as complex, but has the idea of bodily characteristics (Latin complexiō) mixed up in it, too.

The Swamps of Amazon

 There's a new edition of one of my books being published soon. It's called Hand & Foot, and it's a story set in the 1790s in a small town in Southern England. Two girls, one rich, one poor, both finding a way to be themselves. It's aimed at readers of about ten years old.

Well, I looked it up on Amazon to see if it was available, yet, and it isn't (though the old (first) edition is still for sale if anyone out there is interested. It has some lovely illustrations by Alex Paterson). 

Amazon did, however, have some suggestions of similar books that might do instead.

Now, computer-generated book recommendations should work well: the Amazon computer has information on the star ratings of far more books than any human critic can.

So, what did the Amazon computer suggest as a substitute for my Georgian mid-grade story?

1. How To Be A Freelance Writer

2. Four adult colouring books (including one called Amazing Sea Life Vol 2)

and

3. Peter the Picky Polar Bear.

Ah well. 

As a part-time critic I suddenly feel almost competent.

Word To Use Today: recommendation. This word comes from the Latin word commendāre, which is a strong form of the word mandāre, to entrust.

I ought to say here that I've never bought any kind of a colouring book or anything about polar bears. 

And that I actually know how to be a freelance writer already.