So you think you're self-centred

I have a tendency to write, and think, often about words or situations of egotistic nature, such as hubris. Yet until recently I had never truly known what an ego was and I only found that through the word id.

Your id is the unconscious that craves for gratification and pleasure thus the source of all your impulses. Which then leads into your ego giving preconscious realisation to the id's wants and helping those wants in a way that will benefit the long term and not cause grief to yourself. Finally you have the conscious, or as Freud called it your super-ego. This is where your thoughts lie, your beliefs and the sense of wrong and right. Thus, any guilt you ever feel is created by your own conscious as a mental repercussion of doing something you have judges as being wrong.

So you can see that to be egotistical is to work to realise your id's primal wants without consideration of a moral compass. This would suggest that all the greed and personal gratification people strive for which in turn can cause sadness of others is all due to under developed super-egos, although some may mistake you for being hubris if you where to say 'I have a massive super-ego' even though in fact you are saying quite the opposite.

When you start to think of your brain in this way; id giving the want, the ego the drive and the super-ego the check at the end it can give illumination on why you act as you do. Not that I am suggesting that a lack of super-ego is an excuse to do what you want but it could be a cause.

A helping hand

I have been away for a while not in body but in mind as I have been writing my own book and taken up a musical instrument, breaching new personal horizons. This all in all has lead me back to blogging and in a hubris manner I have been reminded of the word polymath. However, what use is knowledge if you do nothing with it so leading me neatly to the word:

Philanthropist

This means a person engaging in philanthropy; the pursuit of charity with an altruistic humanist touch. It somewhat feels that this word is reserved for those wealthy souls, like Bill Gates, who turn in their later life to champion charities. Yet the way it rolls of the tongue drives me to persist in finding a way to slide it neatly into my everyday vernacular.

This is for once where I am a little stumped, it is all well and good using it as your synonym for a humanitarian or suggest someone's philanthropy when they are generous nevertheless those occasions are few and far between.

Perhaps I need to go to more charity events in order to hobnob with philanthropists . . .

Stinginess

Normally my posts have nothing to do with current trends, they only include what I have found. However, for once I have a word that could be used in this current climate of post recession life

Parsimony

This is, as the title may have suggested, extreme frugality. Thus, you could say that 'the recession has made parsimonious individuals of all of us'. Or, 'because Dave is short on cash he spends his money parsimoniously'.

Not much more need be said on this, so I shall be parsimonious with my words and sign off here.

Finding new words

I have created this blog to be an out let for my expanding vernacular. Just a list of, what I find, interesting words. However, it had never come to my attention what I was doing in creating a list of words with definitions. It is a very crude dictionary, and so to today's word

Lexicographical

This is the act of writing and editing a dictionary. I suppose I should not really be surprised by this subconscious lexicographical tendency. For I was raised in a town with a link, some what tedious one, to one of the original dictionary writers. Dr Samuel Johnson writer of the 'Dictionary of English Language', that predated the Oxford English dictionary, was once forced to stand in the rain, without a hat, because he refused to help his father on his book stall in Uttoxeter. This means so much to those in the small east Staffordshire town that there is a memorial in the market place to commemorate it. So maybe making a dictionary is not such a bad thing as it could lead to inconsequential parts of your life being commemorated.

Your own experiments

Ever had someone inspire and coax your interest in a subject to such an extent that it causes you to go away and find out more by your own means? Well if so you have already encountered this adjective

Heuristic

It means, as I have already hinted at, the act of pointing out, or indicating, to the extent of stimulating interest to cause further investigation. This is one of the few words that I have found for which I love the connotations but struggle to find a straight forward example. My reasoning is thus, if I where to say 'go away and learn about it yourself' it sounds negative. However, the idea of someone inspiring you, such as a great teacher, to the extent that you devote your own time to finding out more, then that is a good thing. Heuristic can also be attributed to trial by error methods of experimentation the idea of learning by doing, rather than learning from someone else's experience you are having your own.

This gives great credence to heuristic learning, to which I would like to add I hope that this blog is heuristic to your interest and expansion of vocabulary. On which note I will leave you to do your own investigation.

I don't like you

There are some strong words out there. Those that hit home most are the negative ones, so if you wish to reference something that you would attribute a negative connotation to this may interest you

Anathema

This is a person or thing that is detested or loathed. Thus, you can have an anathema or anathemas. For instance, one of my personal anathemas is the use of crass language. Anything and everything could be your own personal anathema, making the application of the word near limitless.

So go ahead and loath things if only to give more opportunity to use anathema.

Does it sound nice?

My previous post has got me thinking, what is the difference between something sounding nice and something that sounds nice. Rather sounds like a riddle doesn't it, what I mean is the difference between something sweet sounding and something sweet to hear. Still not with me, well to reference earlier posts mellifluous is something sweet sounding but encompasses both things that are sonorous, like music, and things that are ment to ameliorate or ego stroke.
So, this leads me all in all to sweet nothings and empty words. Are sweet nothings just a gentle kiss to the ear with no meaning or is the meaning in the pleasure we take from hearing them. This is where I fall down unknowing . . .

My personal propensity is for seeing worth in you getting, or giving, pleasure whatever the scenario. Like telling a random person that they look nice, it means nothing and leads no where but it will make them feel good and lets you walk away thinking that you have brightened someone's day. Try it, always makes me feel good. Don't say you smell nice though, that doesn't go down as well.

What do you think? Do you see mellifluous words as sonorous nothings or sweet somethings? I hope you have enjoined reading this, as then to me, although it lacks content, it has meaning.

Ed

Ooo, that sounds nice

One of my main reasons for enjoying words, apart form those which give me an excuse to used z's and x's, is the sound they make when saying them. Something perfectly sonorous is a delight to the ear, almost like a Brahms symphony. With that in mind I give you:
mellifluous
As I have already alluded to, as well as sounding nice, this word actually means to be sweet sounding. This comes through an alternate meaning to be sweet with honey, inspecting deeper still following the etymology of the word it would be directly 'to flow with honey'. Personally I love the imagery of something sounding so nice that it flows like honey, sweet and nonchalant. The mellifluous qualities of a word I believe can be worth more than the insipid nature of them. Although, many things can be said about empty words, if they are sweet on the ear I see them as beyond reproach. However, this could dive you into the question of what is sweet to hear? Is it something as I suggest above 'music to one's ear' or is it something more personal like an ego stroking.

With this thought I leave you in order to find your own mellifluous things.

Ed

What a mistake

Have you ever thought that something was so bad that you needed a word with more gravitas than simply 'bad' to use as an adjective? Such as an unredeemable mistake or a terrible blog post, well I give you

Egregious

This is something that is extraordinarily bad, flagrant or just plain heinous. So for instance if someone where to do something reprehensible, then before ameliorating the situation through admonition, you could be tempted to exclaim 'That is a egregious mistake'. Or in the incredibly rude case of someone lying to you a response could be 'You are an egregious deceiver, only looking to obfuscate matters'.

What I quite enjoy about this word is the fact that with just a little thought it can be used extensively, unlike last time's word. All you need to do is replace every 'very bad' with egregious. Or alternatively an example would be to say that this is an egregious goalkeeping error, maybe not as snappy as howler but a little more flair in language I think should be appreciated.

So I wish you all on your way with the hope that your mistakes are not egregious.

Ed

Is that a rhetorical question?

Normally I use this blog to talk about words that can be used to invigorate your language to the point of making conversations and writing fun by using a bit of flare.
However, today I am going to take a different tack. This is somewhat inspired by the book I'm reading at the moment (eats shoots and leaves by Lynne Trust).
Interrobang
This is a rather fun word to say yet I can not think of a time to use it. An interrobang is the punctuation mark which is half way between a question mark and an exclamation mark, to be used when you want to evoke a mixture of query and intersection. Such as at the end of a rhetorical question, hence the title.
So your question is most likely, 'what does it look like?'. Unfortunately my current type set stops me from displaying it here, but imagine a question mark and exclamation mark written ontop of each other such that they share the point and you have a interrobang. For a good picture try this
So a little divergence here from words to punctuation but then it was once said by Edgar Allen Poe 'The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood. For the want of a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid'.
With that thought I will leave you, until next time.

Ed