2021-04-11 #diceRollProse
Stats
Words: 165
Words-of-the-day: 27
Inclusion: 16%
Sentences with no words-of-the-day: 1
Most words-of-the-day in one sentence: 5
Nouns: 13
Adjectives: 8
Verbs: 6
Words of the week
Hare (v): to go swiftly.
Buka (n): (Nigerian) a roadside restaurant or street stall with a seating area, selling cooked food at low prices.
Bricolage (n): a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.
Leporine (adj): of, relating to, or resembling a rabbit or hare.
Cupidity (n): eager or excessive desire, especially to possess something; greed; avarice.
From scratch (adj).
Apathy (n): lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.
Parish pumpery (n): concern with local matters exclusively, parochialism; (also) people having such concerns collectively.
Brusque (adj): blunt in manner or speech often to the point of ungracious harshness.
Shimmy (v): an American ragtime dance marked by shaking of the hips and shoulders.
Putative (adj): commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed. – believed to be the person or thing mentioned.
Delimit (v): to fix or mark the limits or boundaries of; demarcate.
Shrub (n).
Barefaced (adj): with the face uncovered. – shameless; impudent; audacious.
Adminicle (n): an aid; auxiliary.
Runoff (n): something that drains or flows off, as rain that flows off from the land in streams.
Cakelet (n): a small cake.
Fontlet (n): a small source or wellspring; a little fountain.
Vegan (adj).
Fatuous (adj): foolish or inane, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly; witless.
Foolishment (n): Foolishness; silliness.
Savvy (n): experienced, knowledgeable, and well-informed; shrewd (often used in combination).
Magnoperate (v): (tansitive) to magnify the greatness of (someone or something); to exalt.
Behove (v): to be necessary or proper for, as for moral or ethical considerations; be incumbent on. – to be worthwhile to, as for personal profit or advantage.
Vendetta (n): an often prolonged series of retaliatory, vengeful, or hostile acts or exchange of such acts.
Deliquescent (adj): having a tendency to liquify spontaneously by dissolving in moisture absorbed from the air.
Exonerating (v): to clear, as of an accusation; free from guilt or blame; exculpate.
Unused Words of the week
Applicant (n).
Doodad (n): a decorative embellishment; trinket; bauble.
Easter (n).
Gold star wife (n): (US military) the widow of a member of the United States armed forces who was killed in action.
Grouch (v): to be sulky or morose; show discontent; complain, especially in an irritable way.
Gunter’s line (n): (mathematics): A logarithmic line on a Gunter’s scale which is used to perform the multiplication and division of numbers mechanically with only dividers.
Hoosegow (n): (American slang) a jail.
Inductee (n): a person inducted into an organization.
Megillah (n): a lengthy, detailed explanation or account.
On the fritz (adj).
Pasch egg (n): a coloured hard-boiled egg given as an easter gift.
Percontation (n): A question which cannot be properly given a one-word andwer like “yes” or “no”.
Reputation (n).
Schröderizsation (n): (politics) the co-opting and corruption of foreign business or political figures by hostile regimes.
Spic-and-span (adj).
Breakdown
I really struggled to get a feel for this week’s words-of-the-day. No clear idea came to mind. Then words like cupidity, bricolage and, barefaced began to paint the image of impetuous or spoilt personality which eventually became the crux of what I wanted to write.
There was definitely an Easter theme in the words-of-the-day this week. Ignoring that, I was happy to adopt hare and leporine into making Zoe a rabbity, erratic character with high expectations of her future husband. Impressions of Zoe escalates quickly when the protagonist negatively describes her social accolades: Storming with apathy, brusque injection into councils with putative authority, delimiting local affairs. She’s not been at all fair in how she’s gone about their new relationship. The paragraph ends with a summary from the protagonist, comparing what’s been happening to his estate like being a new adminicle runoff into her estate. It gives you a feel for how forlorn and helpless he has felt over this episode of his life.
Then the prose makes a turn in the next paragraph. Things become more hopeful and the writing reflects this with a light hearted flow: Alliteration on the ‘f’ sound, rhyme on cakelet and fontlet, and talk of a pleasant party for all ages. The subtleties of the second paragraph are quite powerful. The repetition of not, nor and nor builds up to the positive statement of ‘Zoe hade made it about us.’ And though there is a lift in tone, you get the impression Zoe has been overarching still as they are her fondant cakelets and it’s her chocolate fontlet.
You get a sense the protagonist is melting on ‘Zoe hade made it about us.’ And this is fulfilled in the next sentence as he seems happy his family has been honoured by the party, and Zoe has shown savvy in this. The key word to this story has to be ‘humbled’ and it was deliberately emphasised with an ellipsis, letting you know the protagonist is really relieved by Zoe’s contrition. From here you are left believing the flourishing romance between the pair. I really like how sensual deliquescent dance sounds. Deliquescent is science for a solid substance absorbing vapour in the atmosphere around it, so much so the substance turns into a liquid itself. I purposefully and analogously had the dancers absorb the gaze of their loved ones to do justice to deliquescent.
If I was to improve this piece, I would have liked to extend it. The first paragraph is somewhat choppy and jarring. The transition between paragraphs isn’t smooth either. I’d embellish with another paragraph, perhaps, describing more on what is going on at the party. There is also a bad-author typo on a word-of-the-day. can you spot it? Brosque, bad.
Art
Dancers by Michelle Tolo
