by beatriceotto | Apr 4, 2018 | put in a good word
Can a word change a life? This Eskimo word changed mine and made me curious about a people who could create such a word. I’ve spent the last quarter of a century turning it over in my mind like a gleaming pebble in the palm of the hand, pondering what I could...
by beatriceotto | Apr 4, 2018 | put in a good word
A glorious Eskimo word for feeling deeply happy – I wish you many moments of quviannikumut. ‘Sitting high on a sea cliff in sunny, blustery weather in late June – the familiar sense of expansiveness, of deep exhilaration such weather brings over one,...
by beatriceotto | Apr 4, 2018 | put in a good word
Barry Lopez’ masterful Arctic Dreams gave me an inkling of a richly philosophical seam in the Eskimo language. If you sit down and watch, read or listen to the news, you may despair at the apparent absence of anything resembling an isumataq in the upper echelons...
by beatriceotto | Apr 4, 2018 | put in a good word
May you be ever spared this suffocating, madness-inducing winter depression. Lopez describes the misery or insanity it can bring on, and the compassion often shown to those who succumb to it. It seems a product of endless cold and darkness, but it has an...
by beatriceotto | Nov 27, 2017 | metaphors
When there is substance behind them, the most ordinary words acquire meaning, and so satisfy the senses as ripe nuts falling in the lap of a hungry man might satisfy hunger. This idea of commonplace words placed uncommonly and so providing nourishment for the mind or...
by beatriceotto | Oct 1, 2017 | put in a good word
Glorious word this, describing a dirty, untidy or slovenly person, or behaving in a lazy, indolent or clumsy way, as in ‘You’ve slummocked in bed for weeks’. ‘Stop slummocking, will you?’ Now, where did I find this word? I’m too...
by beatriceotto | Aug 29, 2017 | triologisms
Such jaw-gripping tenacity is used to describe the force that the ending ‘-cious’ adds to words, as in the word ‘tenacious’. Thoreau observes and analyses language as incisively as he observes and analyses nature. ‘… the...
by beatriceotto | Jul 19, 2017 | put in a good word
A besom is a broom made of twigs tied around a stick, though in Scottish & Northern English it’s also a derogatory term for a woman or girl. ‘A scrawny, buttermilk-faced young besom, allus askin’ questions an’ pokin’ tha’ nose...
by beatriceotto | Jul 19, 2017 | put in a good word
Graidely seems an alternative spelling to ‘gradely’ which means fine and good; promising and likely; being in good health or physically attractive; fitting and proper. “He’s took a graidely fancy to thee. He wants to see thee and he wants to...
