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Fun with semantics!
Yes, I know I just posted, but some things are worth spamming for.
Every so often I pick up S I Hayakawa's classic Language in Thought and Action for a bit of light reading. This dates back to the first time I read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and got it mixed up with Language, Truth, and Logic. Anyway, last night I opened it randomly to a chapter about the importance of context to the meaning of a word, and how ignoring context of words and statements is the best way to start endless, uproductive arguments. At the end of the chapter were some exercises:
Exercise 1 asks you to take five sentences using a nonsense word in context and derive a definition therefrom. One of the words it uses as such is 'wanky'.
I think (now I'm done cracking up) that I'm disappointed nobody picked up on the British slang meaning. It's a book on semantics, man! Unless they did it on purpose, in order to make a point about context. In which case they should have used different example sencences. To wit:
1. He seems to be perpetually wanky.
2. Some people feel most wanky in the early morning, but I get that way just before supper.
3. If you want to get over that wanky feeling, take Johnson's Homogenized Yeast Tablets.
4. . . . the wanky, wanky bluebell / that droops upon its stem . . .
5. I'm not cross, just wanky.
I sense a new set of journelfen icons brewing.
Every so often I pick up S I Hayakawa's classic Language in Thought and Action for a bit of light reading. This dates back to the first time I read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and got it mixed up with Language, Truth, and Logic. Anyway, last night I opened it randomly to a chapter about the importance of context to the meaning of a word, and how ignoring context of words and statements is the best way to start endless, uproductive arguments. At the end of the chapter were some exercises:
Exercise 1 asks you to take five sentences using a nonsense word in context and derive a definition therefrom. One of the words it uses as such is 'wanky'.
I think (now I'm done cracking up) that I'm disappointed nobody picked up on the British slang meaning. It's a book on semantics, man! Unless they did it on purpose, in order to make a point about context. In which case they should have used different example sencences. To wit:
1. He seems to be perpetually wanky.
2. Some people feel most wanky in the early morning, but I get that way just before supper.
3. If you want to get over that wanky feeling, take Johnson's Homogenized Yeast Tablets.
4. . . . the wanky, wanky bluebell / that droops upon its stem . . .
5. I'm not cross, just wanky.
I sense a new set of journelfen icons brewing.