The lock-up affects us
all in different ways.
In a moment of madness
I went looking for face mask patterns through Google search and found several.
My helpful husband also found and printed off one for me to use. I dug into
boxes of craft materials that I have not accessed since the grand girl got too
old to come out here and make things while we looked after her for her parents
(she was putting in her own zippers by her last visit). I have piles of
suitable fabric and filter material. I looked for and found an incredible assortment
of sizes of elastic. And got at it, yesterday.
Needless to say, the
first try was an abject failure. I used the pattern JG found
and it turned out
to be way too big and too loose. I am now about to embark on a second that
strikes me as being a bit small, but we will see. Goodness knows I have lots of
stuff to keep at it until I get one that actually works. In the meantime, a
Facebook friend who is an incredibly talented seamstress has made one mask
(that she posted about anyway) that not only works and fits but has a matched pattern on it. Oh, well.
More on this topic
later. Maybe. For non-sewers, I promise to warn you.
My other preoccupation
has been, of course, news. On the internet, on the radio, in our two daily
papers. Quite a bit of it is very confusing. Quite a bit of it is bad for my
blood pressure. Some of it made me cry. And I made a most embarrassing discovery
about a mistake I have been making for quite some time.
I have this prejudice
about the meaning of words. I like them to be used the way I think is accurate.
I can work myself up to a really good grumble when someone uses ‘decimate’ to
mean a high but indeterminate number of deaths. You see, I was a Roman era
scholar back in the day and learned that ‘decimate’ means ‘destroy one in ten’,
* I know that the meaning has broadened, but that doesn’t mean I have to like
it.
* Definition of decimate (transitive verb)
1: to select by lot and kill every tenth man of,
decimate a regiment
2: to exact a tax of 10 percent from
3a: to reduce drastically especially in number.
cholera decimated the population
The connection between decimate and the number ten
harks back to a brutal practice of the army of ancient Rome. A unit that was
guilty of a severe crime (such as mutiny) was punished by selecting and
executing one-tenth of its soldiers, thereby scaring the remaining nine-tenths
into obedience.
It's no surprise that the word for this practice came
from Latin decem, meaning "ten." From this root we also get
our word decimal and the name of the month of December, originally the tenth
month of the calendar before the second king of Rome decided to add January and
February. In its extended uses decimate strayed from its "tenth"
meaning and nowadays refers to the act of destroying or hurting something in
great numbers.
 |
| Decimation by William Hogarth Beavers, Roman Military Punishments, Chapter 4 (Wikipedia) |
Um, I was going somewhere before I got diverted into Merriam-Webster.
Oh yes. It finally percolated through my thick skull that the modern world is
using ‘fake news’ not to mean something that is made up rather than real but to
indicate something that is exaggerated by the press beyond its neutral news
value. Not as in ‘fake it till you make it’. Back to Google.**
** adjective: fake, not
genuine; counterfeit.
Similar: forgery, counterfeit, copy, sham’ fraudulent
(of a person) claiming to be something that one is not,
"a fake doctor"
There are even several definitions*** of ‘fake news’
that could have clued me in earlier if I had not been so arrogant.
*** Fake news is written and published usually with the
intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain
financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright
fabricated headlines to increase readership, (Wikipedia)
Words that ‘stray from their original meaning’. Little
lost sheep, Bah, humbug. I feel obliged to take a different look at what
President Trump has been trumpeting about, much as I would rather scrub
toilets.
It is so easy to misread someone’s comments when a
word is not being used in the same sense by both parties. I recall pleading
with my junior high school students to regard language as a tool and realize
that the sharper the tool, the better the result. I have not long since been hammering
at my ESL students to try to get them to understand that there is a difference between
the simple tenses and the progressive tenses. (‘I eat my breakfast at 8:00’ am
vs ‘I am eating my breakfast’) My father was a lawyer, my mother a life-long
student and teacher of English. They used to argue about language, my mother
accusing my father of obfuscation in some legal document he had written and my
father complaining that Shakespeare was not poetry because it did not rhyme. (Not
hard to see why I turned out the way I am, eh.) And misreading plays hob with
cooperation and fellowship.
You really know your words and etymology. I know about decimate, but it is in the background of my brain, so I am quite likely to use it incorrectly -- which is becoming correct, of course. Good luck with the masks. Sue has fashioned two non-sew masks that we haven't needed to use yet since we are being ridiculously unsociable.
ReplyDeleteOne needs only see the title President attached to the current occupant of the White House to see how far words have strayed from their original meaning. The depth of my outrage, sorrow, and fear because of that particular Word Debacle is boundless.
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