The little figure of the die is one of my favorites.
It is so neat and dotted, intact and self-contained, and yet with so many tentacled implications.
It's a loaded word, too, as dice can be loaded, hiding the fatal verb in it. I also like that die’s plural is dice. There’s nothing like the die-dice pair.
The mice don’t have their mie.
Advice has no advie, and rice must walk this world alone, or at least as a collective singular.
Another word I like is stacks, as in library stacks, which has no singular. Such stacks in fact are not stacked at all, ideally, but lined up in rows. For stacking stacks you need a used book shop or a plate of pancakes.
But what brought all this up was another word that I read today and meant to take note of, but now slips my mind. It’s like this morning, I put a pan of milk on the stove to warm and when I came back to get it the pan was nice and warm but there was no milk in it.
And now I remember the word: absentminded. It struck me funny. I wanted to give it a hyphen, but the dictionary says no. Perhaps I knew that.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
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9 comments:
Then there is hose. I always liked to say ho in regards to one of the pair. Also I prefer the word absentminded to forgetful. There's more action in it.
I've done that with the milk. And the hyphen. And the mind.
Ron, you mean panty hose? laugh
Kathleen, as long as it's not all at the same time.
I like hyphens, too. But grown-up hyphens (dashes) are even better. And the parenthesis (it has a sotto voce feel to it).
Of late, however, I've been finishing (or not quite) my thoughts with the ellipsis. It's as if every idea is unfinished. I told my wife to use it on my gravestone some day.
Unfinished product...
Yes, the ellipsis has something of an apology about it.
Not panty hose, the separate stockings.
The German word for pants (trousers) is Hose. "die Hose." And when things are really boring you say it's "tote Hose," meaning "dead pants." Not that this has anything to do with plural hose. smile
So lederhose means one pair of shorts and lederhosen is the plural? Did I spell this right? Or is it lieder? Pants seems to be a good way to characterize someone or something. As in smarty-pants or poopy-pants.
Lederhose is a pair of leather pants or shorts. Lederhosen is the plural, although come to think of it they're often referred to in the plural.
Liederhose would be "song pants," which I have yet to encounter. Or possibly singing pants!
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