Word of the Day
Friday, April 13, 2007
Oh, isn’t this an ominous day? Great.
Conundrum (noun) – A riddle that has no satisfactory ending; a riddle with a fanciful question answered with a pun (difficult!) (The etymology on this one is fuzzy, but it looks Latin.)
In keeping with our theme this week, let me explain that riddles were a great pastime for the Anglo-Saxons. I’ll list a couple for you in the following post and see if you can guess them before you read the answers at the end of the “article”. In my novel Choices Meant for Gods, the characters make reference to riddles, but I didn’t include any OE examples for fear of getting nailed with plagiarism or some such equally horrid public relations fiasco. The ones I made up sucked, and I valued my readers too much to subject them to that nonsense. Maybe I’ll hone my riddle-writing skill and throw one or two into Book III before I complete it. You know how dragons love their riddles…
In The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien had Bilbo escape Gollum’s lair through the use of riddles, which the good professor proudly admitted was an influence of his Old English obsession.
Word in a Sentence: In my novel Choices Meant for Gods, Chariss finds herself in a conundrum when Nigel professes a love she feels compelled to return, yet she thinks a madman will be chasing her from Nigel’s home any day.
Your turn! I think I botched that pretty well. Can you all do better? In fact: bonus points if you can come up with a riddle instead of a mere sentence of the day.
“Some days, I just want the dragon to win.”
Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, grammar, word, Old English, Anglo-Saxon, riddles, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Friday, April 13, 2007
Oh, isn’t this an ominous day? Great.
Conundrum (noun) – A riddle that has no satisfactory ending; a riddle with a fanciful question answered with a pun (difficult!) (The etymology on this one is fuzzy, but it looks Latin.)
In keeping with our theme this week, let me explain that riddles were a great pastime for the Anglo-Saxons. I’ll list a couple for you in the following post and see if you can guess them before you read the answers at the end of the “article”. In my novel Choices Meant for Gods, the characters make reference to riddles, but I didn’t include any OE examples for fear of getting nailed with plagiarism or some such equally horrid public relations fiasco. The ones I made up sucked, and I valued my readers too much to subject them to that nonsense. Maybe I’ll hone my riddle-writing skill and throw one or two into Book III before I complete it. You know how dragons love their riddles…
In The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien had Bilbo escape Gollum’s lair through the use of riddles, which the good professor proudly admitted was an influence of his Old English obsession.
Word in a Sentence: In my novel Choices Meant for Gods, Chariss finds herself in a conundrum when Nigel professes a love she feels compelled to return, yet she thinks a madman will be chasing her from Nigel’s home any day.
Your turn! I think I botched that pretty well. Can you all do better? In fact: bonus points if you can come up with a riddle instead of a mere sentence of the day.
“Some days, I just want the dragon to win.”
Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, grammar, word, Old English, Anglo-Saxon, riddles, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
posted by Sandy Lender | 6:04 AM
1 Comments:
The conundrum of the day here revolves around words said between my daughter and her hubby and misunderstandings because he says one thing but means something else, which she picks up on and immediately, it triggers a tad of her quick temper, which he interprets then as she is in a bad mood but has no idea why. And all of these things being said and misunderstood because their son, who turned a year old today, doesn't particularly like to go to bed at a set, much less a decent time, awakens off and on throughout the night and won't always easily fall back to sleep and all of this is greatly causing a lot of static and interference in another form of their life together which I will not discuss further here. But, needless to say, it is a conundrum, for sure!
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