Each week, I’m going to present an amazing word. This week I will present FOUR.
Introducing the amazing Jonathan Swift at the ripe old age of 347.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is one of the better
known works of the 18th Century and one of the earliest examples of
science fiction.
In particular, the floating island of Laputa, which is
dripping in symbolism depicting the English rule over the Irish at the time—Jonathan
Swift was a High Church Anglican and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
Laputa, which is Spanish for the whore, represented England.
Gulliver’s Travels
is an amazing book for a number of reasons, but I will focus here on a couple
of the amazing words Swift made up in his book that are now used in the English
language. Then I will introduce a couple of very "modern" words first coined by Mr. Swift.
This week my FIRST
amazing word is:
BROBDINGNAGIAN
In Gulliver’s travels, Gulliver comes upon a land between
Japan and North America which is six thousand miles wide.
This land is Brobdingnag
and it was in inhabited by BROBDINGNAGIANS.
This wonderfully satisfying word to roll over the tongue is now used to mark
tremendous size.
Examples
Tom’s relationships
were continually hampered by the Brobdingnagian
proportions of both his ego and his sexual appetite.
To build further on the word Brobdingnagian, when you use the word it is best to give subtle
context of the original fictional source.
To this end try and use it to refer
to a place or person.
Example
I watched him lean
down toward the ground and thought, basketball rather than lawn bowling might
better suit his Brobdingnagian
frame.
My SECOND amazing Gulliver word is:
YAHOO
We all know that this word was made famous in 1994 when,
"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" (a website directory
of other websites) was renamed "Yahoo!"
However, that Yahoo was actually
an anagram for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.
The word Yahoo means a rude, noisy or violent person, a
member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gulliver's Travel's who have the form and
all the vices of man. It is synonymous with rednecks, louts or oafs.
It can also have feel good meaning, expressing great joy or
excitement.
Example
Yahoo—my plan worked!
Jonathan swift also coined some other popular words like:
MODERNISM
He first used the term modernism to a Mr. Pope:
"The corruption of English by those Scribblers who send
us over their trash in Prose and Verse, with abominable curtailings (sic) and
quaint modernisms."
Modernism, as Swift coined the term, refers to "a
usage, mode of expression, peculiarity of style, etc., characteristic of modern
times," says the Online English Dictionary.
It is now mostly associated with any innovative or
distinctively modern feature.
Example
The modernism of the car engine is removing the (amateur) owner-tinkering more prevalent with the engine of the 70’s an 80‘s.
TRUISM
"The title of
this chapter, a Truism."
"Remarks Upon a Book," The Works of Jonathan
Swift, D.D., 1824
A truism is a self-evident truth, more commonly known as a
cliche.
Example
A wise man once said, “I
will respect the polarization of American politics, when the poles of American
politics respect each other.” Rarely has a more poignant truism been
spoken.
