Wednesday, April 16, 2008

objurgate:


to express strong disapproval of; to criticize severely.

objurgate comes from the past participle of Latin from objurgare, "to scold, to blame," from ob-, "against" + jurgare, "to dispute, to quarrel, to sue at law," from jus, jur-, "law" + -igare (from agere, "to lead").

now why, I ask you. and the asking isn't a need for an answer necessarily. might just be a desire for conversation. might just be an (?) rhetorical device.

now why, I ask again, aware of not having finished the first question, why do I think that rhetorical begs for an rather than a?

but why, I was asking. why does the new word I learned today thrill my heart, or whatever feels so suddenly cold?

I don't know. I'm thrilled by words. it's always been this way, or at least as long as I can recall, which is as good as forever if it's all you are likely to know.

2 comments:

Pauline said...

Don't you just love words and what you can do with them? They're like modeling clay - you can create endless structures with them. Your musing on "an" vs "a" - the old rule says "an" is used before a word starting with h in which the h is silent, as in "an honorable profession" or if the first syllable of the h word is unstressed. The rule used to be hard and fast but now it's more of a phonetic thing.

Peter Bryenton said...

An hotel, a motel, there must be a poem in there somewhere for you guys.