June 2008

Metrophobia is fear of poetry

23 Jun, 2008  No Comment

What stops me from publishing poetry on this site is that we all suffer from poetry anxiety. As soon as people offer poetry we nervously await bad rhymes or over-sentimentality. I found a word on several Internet sites to describe this: metrophobia, meaning fear of poetry.

One psychology site describes the effect of metrophobia:

…each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress.

They offer an inexpensive clinic to cure your metrophobia (starting at $2497).

They also hold clinics for hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, a fear of long words. They say:

…each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress.

They offer an inexpensive cure (starting at $2497).

The page content stays identical, only the phobia name changes.

Creating phobia names is a word game and the Internet is full of these invented words. Disappointingly metrophobia is one of these neologisms; as is hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

Another wonderful one is spectocloacaphobia, the fear of one’s eyeglasses falling in the sewer.

So be careful choosing your words.

Be TALKATIVE in business

17 Jun, 2008  No Comment

Well, well … perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am – my friends get round me – we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories – and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.

This is a passage from Wind in the Willows; Toad responds to Badger who has just accused Toad of not being able to hold his tongue.

Being talkative is a failing according to Badger, but not to Toad.

Surprisingly, a review of online dictionaries shows they tend to agree with Badger; they give talkative negative connotations such as garrulous or blabber-mouthed.

I would have included communicative as a synonym for talkative - but not the online dictionaries. 

However, under communicative the dictionaries include talkative as a synonym along with extraverted, gregarious, or outgoing.

There is something amiss: it works one way but not the other. Perhaps the writers of dictionaries are all Badgers.

Being talkative or communicative are very good things for business – you need to constantly engage with your customers. If you are in business you should listen to Toad and not to Badger, particulary if you are running a salon.

Lets give Toad the last word:

The clever men at OxfordKnow all that there is to be knowed.But they none of them know one half as muchAs intelligent Mr. Toad!

Do you mean BUSINESS?

6 Jun, 2008  No Comment

The evolution of the word business has followed a similar path to the evolution of a business.We know that running a business keeps you in a state of busyness. The words business and busyness aren’t closely related although they both originated from the word busy.

Busy (originally bignis) is a very old word according to word connections. It existed in Old English and Dutch but nowhere else.  

The Online Etymological Dictionary suggests that business (bisignisse) evolved in the north of England and that its original meaning, perhaps unsurprisingly, was anxiety; anxious having been one of the meanings of busy.

The meaning of business diverged in the 14th-15th centuries into being busy, and one’s work or occupation.

The sense of business as a trade and commercial entity appeared in the 18th century (in the 17th busy was a euphemism for being sexually active).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, business came to mean quite a few things.

So what does this mean for the business-person? You start off anxious, get busy, work hard, develop an occupation or trade, hope you don’t get screwed and, perhaps, after a very long time you might be successful.