They say a picture speaks a thousand words. Well you didn't know my mother.
When I was growing up my mother had what I would have considered an extensive vocabulary. At times I swore she was making words up. I loved listening to her stories and how she spoke, I could always imagine the places she spoke about and the adventures. There were certain words that my mum(that's how she spelt mum)used frequently, and to this day I use many of these same words, even though I may get a quizzical look from the recipient.
What sparked this flashback of memories you might ask. Well I'll tell you. Are you familiar with Reader's Digest? If so you will know they have a section in there called "Word Power". It tests your vocabulary IQ or Word Power. I love that section. You go through the words pick your answer and see how many you got right and then you are rated fair, good or excellent. Some months I am just so pathetic, I haven't a clue as to what most of the words mean. Each month they present the words based on a theme. The July issue was "Manly Man" celebrating all things manly. In another edition they did it on newspaper names and their meanings. This month's theme "Words of Yesteryear". Of course my curiosity was piqued so I quickly looked down the list and out bounced words I haven't heard of in a while nor had I used since my girls were little.
Here are a couple of the words.....Ragamuffin(I love that word and how my mum made it sound), Lollygag(again another of my favourites it use to remind me of Lollies{lollipops}) of course that isn't what it meant. Or what about Rapscallion.....awe yes that was one of my mums all time favourites. It's funny you know even as a little child I knew what those words meant only because of the tone and the situation in which the words were used. I still use those words to this day, however, as I said I do get the odd look as if I made it up.
If you want to know the answers to those words check out Reader's Digest September 2010 edition.
7 comments:
This was fun for me because those were words my mother used frequently and I in turn used with my daughter. I enjoyed this post. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.
Thanks Carver...yes it was a fun post to make..it brought back great memories and well I am always up for the challenge of a new word or two...
This post brought back memories of words my mother and grandmothers used to use. Come to think of it I probably still use some of them. ;)
Big words, different words and the like, now that's something that I have a bit of a reputation for using or apparently do based on something one of my best friend's husband told me one day. I had called her home and he answered the phone. I don't recall what inspired me to start chatting to him at first but I had said something to him that I supposed he recognized my super-melodic voice and thus was able to identify me by that and he said "NO, it was because of the big words you used!" Hmmm. I still tease him about that. But seriously, when I was in high school, our English teacher always made us get a subscription to the Reader's Digest (a student's edition as a lowered price I think it was) and we always had to take those Word Power quizzes. Plus once a year, he also got some test from The Reader's Digest that ranked us then based on our vocabulary skills. My claim to fame in our senior year was that from that test, I had the highest score that year in my class. But that was probably due to the fact that I read virtually everything and anything around me -always had my nose in a book of some type or other and that's what I attributed my larger than the average vocabulary to back in those days. Lately though, the old vocabulary has been doing a lot of back-sliding! (Need to start reading -a lot -again!)
Peace.
RD's Word Power is one of my favourites! Many words there are as aliens as UFO citizens and never heard of even in magazines and newspapers I had read. But they are pretty challenging I can only conjure the closest meaning I could sense. And when I checked the answers, ughhh .... very disappointing that my knowledge of words didn't go that far. haha
There's a lot to learn from folks who are old-schooled.
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