Graphwords Get the picture

This article appeared in the Northern Colorado Writers May 2012 newsletter.

Like my fellow Northern Colorado Writers, I love words.  A little over year ago I was thrilled when Kerrie Flanagan had the “Flip Dictionary” in stock at the studio.  What a fun tool and useful too it can be.

This great pseudo-thesaurus works well, but I it doesn’t exactly suit my style of learning.  Of the three modes of learning, (visual, auditory and kinesthetic), I am definitely take in my information primarily in visual form.

For example, tell me orally how to get to your house or place of business, and I may or may not get there.  Draw a map, and I will be there!   The best thing I ever did was buy a car with GPS.  Now, I can find my way on the map, and ignore that pesky lady who keeps telling me when and where to turn next.

Unfortunately, my wife of more than four decades doesn’t always remember how I process information. On occasion, she will tell me she stopped by a realtor’s open house to check out the place.  She proceeds to tell me in words how the house was laid out.  After her detailed explanation, I haven’t the foggiest idea the relationship of room.  If she would draw a diagram or give me a floor plan, I would be much better off.

So, this all brings me to a tool I found on the internet. I am excited to share it with all of you. It’s called Graphwords. (www.graphwords.com)  This educational website is fun and free.  All you have to do enter a word, and it will give you a mind map/bubble chart of how this word links to other related words.

Just for fun, I played around with pairs of words on Graphwords.  Try this yourself, looking at the word love then the word hate.  It is interesting to contrast the term fear with confidence too.

Other fun words I tried were book and write. Not wanting to burn up too much time, I stopped there.

What words did you try on Graphwords?

Redunant words — again

Redundant words are one of my favorite topics.  See my earlier blog post on redundant words and redundancies.

At last weekend’s Northern Colorado Writers Conference in Fort Collins, I was again reminded of this topic.  (Find out more about Northern Colorado Writers)

During a break between sessions, I was having a soft drink and chatting with some other conference attendees and one of the agents who attended.  A wonderful fringe benefit about the NCW conference is that the presenters and agents in attendance mingle during breaks, and sit at the tables with the writers at meal times. 

Steve Mettee, one of the agents, sat with us as we took a short respite from the educational sessions.  We all chatted with him about where he was from (California), things to do in Fort Collins, and other conferences he has attended.

Steve was nice enough to ask me about my writing, so I told him about wordsbybob.com.  Steve shared his love for words, and said he has a pet redundancy that bothered him.

Mettee’s example, which I haven’t address in past redundant word blog posts, was “the reason why.”  
I agree with Steve.  It should be ‘the reason” or “why.”   Not both.

This ranks up there with my semi-rant about the somewhat unique redundancy.

As an aside, Steve’s company is called Quill Driver Books.  Quill driver is an interesting term–look it  up.

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Weird words – a guest post

Below is a reprint (is that the right word?) of a blog post by a new friend.  I met Marc Kray at a gathering of people who like Iowa Hawkeye football. (So, he has to be a good guy)     Marc is a realtor in Loveland, and I had no idea he had a blog until he shared this post on weird words with me.

His blog is www.taoofmarc.com

With permission, here is his blog post on words:

Weird Words

The English language (funny in and of itself considering the  “English” spoken in England is vastly different than the  “English” spoken in the US and other places) is full of strange  words, double meanings, double spellings, and just all-around bizarreness that  I couldn’t help but start a list.  Send  me your favorite weird words and I’ll add them here.

In no particular order (just the order I wrote them down  here):

Weird – i before e except after c, and except in some proper  nouns, and except in the word ‘weird’

Signs, signs–everywhere signs

Loveland has lots of good places to walk. I mostly walk a couple of different routine in my neighborhood. A couple of days ago, when I was out for my morning stroll, I came upon a parked truck with a sign on the back that said (in very large letters), YOU NEED PIE! Even at 9-something in the morning, that it difficult to argue with. The truck was from a bakery shop in Estes Park. I didn’t try to raise the sliding door on the back to see if there were any pies inside. I took a picture of it with my camera phone, and I was just going to post it on Facebook.

Then I got thinking about the slogan, and its marketing value. It does get your attention. In another blog I write on fun with words, I posted one some time ago about another truck. Ironically, this was a bakery truck too. It was for the Aspen Bakerry (located in Denver) and it said WHERE YOUR ASPEN? See my prior post on Where’s Your Aspen. Unfortunately, traveling at 75 (or more) m.p.h., I did not get a picture of it. Why do I bring this up? Well, all the pie truck said was YOU NEED PIE. If I was following it down the road, I would have no idea where the business was, or how I could purchase a pie from them. It would have been nice to have the name of the company or a website listed on the back too. Since I was walking, I was able to discern the location of the business. But for a few more drops of paint, more people would have known. They may not be able to drive beside, or walk by the truck as I did.

Fear this!

Phobias or fears were the topic of a recent blog post I did.  Actually, this blog entry was on odd, weird, offbeat or unbelievable  phobias.

In that post  in www.wordsbybob.com  I did not define phobia.   A phone is usually an exaggerated and usually inexplicable/illogical fear of an object, class of  objects or situation.

Here  are some to add to the list of real but unbelievable fears:

Linonophobia is the fear of string.   (I didn’t find a name for the fear of red tape

Pogonophobia  is the fear of beards.  Did Pogo have a  beard?

Pentheraphobia is the fear of your  mother-in-law.  Feel free to insert your
own joke or comment here.

Nephophobia   is the fear of clouds.  It is probably  more prevalent in the Northwest United States.

Lutraphobia  means the fear of otters.

The  fear of long words is either sesquipedaliophobia
or hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia  depending on which source you believe.   Ironic, huh?

Allodoxaphobia  is the fear of opinions. I definitely know people who DO NOT suffer from this.

Genuphobia
relates to the fear of knees.  It did not say whether it’s your knees or someone else’s.

What do you fear?

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