|k| clippings: 2015-10-06 — give one million and one percent!

It’s not too late to back the Wordnik Kickstarter: Let’s Add a Million Missing Words to the Dictionary. I did. And it feels goooooood.

WORK

“The Urban Life”

These morning, when I pass alongside Parisian fish vendors, I witness blank, white, frozen men in the process of wage and capital, spreading out fish fresh from the sea and just off the boat. The unraveled forms sparkle in the sheen of coin and mother-of-pearl, luminous shocks of ice pounded down in stalls, the clear light of January. I suffer their separate deaths, their stared-through eyes, their void. Such jettisoned and mute nakedness…so suddenly I need to feel my heart beneath my coat to convince me who I am—my clean presence; my still warm, still life.

—Liljana Dirjan (translated by P.H. Liotta)
—from The Best of the Prose Poem

WORD(S)

fougue (fogue) /FOOG/. noun. Ardour; impetousness; passion. From French fougue, same meaning. From Latin fuga (flight, fleeing).

“‘Yes, she does have something of that fougue,’ Andrei Antonovich muttered, not without pleasure, at the same time regretting terribly that this ignoramus should dare to express himself quite so freely about Yulia Mikhailovna…” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

“Thus Sforza, cursed with a too fertile brain,
Lost by his wiles the power his wit did gain.
Henceforth their fougue must spend at lesser rate,
Than in its flames to wrap a nation’s fate.”
(John Dryden)

“The conscious agility, fougue, and precision which fill the performer become contagious and delight the spectator as well.” (George Santayana)

“About six weeks, however, after his mother’s death, Coryston’s natural fougue suggested to him that he was being trifled with.” (Mrs. Humphry Ward)

WEB

1. Mostly subtle and wonderful → Animated Book Covers

2. Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next?

3. 20 Words That Aren’t in the Dictionary Yet.

4. A Linguist Explains How We Write Sarcasm on the Internet

5. Today in 1887, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, AKA Le Corbusier, is born in Switzerland. A successful painter and co-founder of the Purism movement, Le Corbusier is remembered most for his career in architecture, particularly his continuing (and controversial) influence on urban planning and architecture stemming from his five principles of architecture and the Villa Radieuse (Radiant City).

WATCH/WITNESS

“Witness the eerily beautiful growth of larvae into bees in this mesmerizing time-lapse video from photographer Anand Varma.” → http://ktxc.to/vid-bee-time-lapse

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. pops up in with a well-timed link: “Every time you post a link to the New Yorker [aside: you don’t really read that rag regularly do you?] I think of the New Yorker Minute newsletter, which synopsizes [and sometimes skewers] each issue as it comes out.” — Indeed. I was going to post a link to a recent article about Kenneth Goldsmith, but now I can confine it here. And I might as well toss in Brian Kim Stefans’ destruction of that article (and Goldsmith).

• Reader K. slips on a journey to use each Katexic WORD in conversation: “I really WANTED to use the word caruncle, but the situation has not come up yet where I might casually slip it into conversation. But soon, I hope!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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