Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I try to be kind.
First up this week, Vim …
Separated from vigor it sounds like a kitchen soap product. Perhaps with punctuation: Vanquish household filth with Vim! And why is vim always linked to vigor? Merriam-Webster suggests rather similar definitions for both. Vim is "robust energy and enthusiasm" while vigor is "active bodily or mental strength or force." I can't recall anyone using the word vim on its own. It's always linked with vigor, and always first in that linkage (nobody says vigor and vim … it's always the other way around). It's a binomial, an irreversible one. One more word and we'd have a trinomial. I must have dozed that day in English class.
Binomials in English: Definition and Examples
Second up this week, Verve …
"I adore their fortitude, ferocity, verve, and heart" (author
Christy Ann Conlin on her characters). Had I both vim and verve in quantity and at the same time, I'm certain I could manage fortitude, ferocity, and heart as well. A couple of other useful "v" words: vivacity and vitality. I did a web search for "vim and verve" using Google and ended up with vim and vigor (vigour in English English). So, now I'm concerned that my "v" words … vim, verve, vigor, vivacity, vitality … are much of a muchness and might as well be compellingly compounded into a new word, thus avoiding binomialism or even pentamarism. Virvgoricity, anyone?
Vigour and Verve: Similar meaning words
Third up this week, Vintage …
In the Vin-World, vintage is the annually designated yield of wine grapes or wine. Outside of wine it applies to the date of making or origin of almost anything. It certainly has an air of oldness and gravitas, which likely contributes to the stuffiness often associated with the world of "vintage wine." Vintage carries a tinge of nostalgia, a yearning for relics of a time not now. It's a hankering for what we each recall as right and good and understandable and even innocent. But time's wind keeps us sailing forward, as we still cling to anchors behind us. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kierkegaard). Can virvgoricity be retro?
Nostalgia, Vintage Items, and the Appeal of Throwback Products
And a bit more:
Picturing You
by Kwame Alexander
I am not a painter
Browns and blues
We get along
But we
are not close
I am no
Van Gogh
But give me
Plain paper
A dull pencil
Some scotch
And I will
Hijack your curves
Take your soul
Hostage
Paint a portrait
So colorful and delicate
You just may have to
Cut off my ear
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem
Sometimes …
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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