It's the in thing

When asked to name four places I have been, I came up with this list:

1. in hot water
2. in love
3. indisposed
4. in the know

"In" is such an interesting word. When my friend Margreet was helping me learn a bit of Dutch (she's fluent in eight languages, but Dutch is her native tongue), she made me notice just how slippery some of our little English prepositions can be. For example, the woman drawn on this ceramic bathtub is actually "IN" hot water. But what are we "IN" when we're in love? What are we "IN" when we're in the know? Here are some more "IN" phrases to ponder, not all of which are prepositions:

in debt
in power
in for it
in with
hit in the face with a pie
the in book this year
paid in cash
written in Dutch
in equal parts
a drawing in pen and ink
split in two
a life in theater
in need
in pursuit
wrote in to the editor
closed in
one in three
three in one
stepped in
took in the view
in reference to your letter
what's in this season
in Indiana, IN means Indiana

Oh, I love playing with words! Don't you?

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is such a nice word. It sprang to mind a few minutes ago when I was playing an online game and noticed the similarity of the Jewel Quest image and the tree I had used in a Blog Action Day post. The game's picture is silliness, but it still greatly resembles the tree, which has grown attached to the fence so that it looks like a face. (Click to enlarge photo.)

Justice

What's the right thing to do?

I'm thinking about justice because of the class Harvard has recently offered to the public. It's an ethics class.

Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that your child needs to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? How much is one human life worth? What do you think and why?

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Now Harvard opens its classroom to the world. Professor Michael Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do. He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. The results are often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white. This course also addresses the hot topics of our day—affirmative action, same-sex marriage, patriotism and rights. Here are some of the topics the class will cover:

The Moral Side of Murder
The Case for Cannibalism
Putting a Price Tag on Life
Consenting Adults
Motherhood: For Sale
A Lesson in Lying
Arguing Affirmative Action
The Claims of Community
Debating Same-sex Marriage
The Good Life

Purview

Last chance to do a November post, so here's the last word I stopped to consider: purview. I was typing along and needed to use the word purview in my novel (draft completed yesterday). I knew the meaning of the word, but it was one that somehow didn't look quite right when I typed it out. So I stopped and looked at it, tried "per" instead of "pur" (which definitely was not it), then asked my roommate Donna. Neither of us was near a dictionary, including the online versions. So I left what I had typed: p-u-r-v-i-e-w. Later I went to my NaNoWriMo write-in (click here for my joyful report), and when I got back to our apartment, Donna had left one of our many dictionaries open to PURVIEW. Yep, I spelled it correctly! Oh, yeah, wanna talk about what it means? This is the definition of it that I intended:

purview
range of vision; scope

Interesting use of the word by the Boston Globe a few days ago:

Obama may give Clinton purview in area where they differed most

The definition as used this way is "range or scope of authority."

Mellifluous

Usually when I post a word here, it's because I've run across it (again) in my reading. This morning while reading blogs by friends, "mellifluous" popped into my head for no discernible reason. It simply sounded good to me. Or maybe I was reading a mellifluous post and it was the most appropriate word.

mellifluous = pleasing to the ear;
"the dulcet tones of the cello"

Exsibilation

Greg Ross found this one and posted it on his Futility Closet blog. When I looked up exsibilation, Dictionary.com had no idea. Google discovered that Wordie, a social network for people who love words, knows what it means:

exsibilation = the collective hisses of a disapproving audience

Now let's see if each of us can work this word into conversations at least three or four times today. Yeah, right!

Tough stuff

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead — it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness' sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why, man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

– Anonymous

Greg Ross of Futility Closet found this, which he posted as Spelling Peril.