Lauf

 August 15 Word of the Day: Lauf

 

Is Scrabble a word game, a vocabulary memory test, or more a form of mathematical improvisation involving letters and numbers? You have to lauf. Formidable 13-year-old Dineth Fernando used this word on his way to winning the World Youth Scrabble Championship in Nairobi. Lauf he did, four letters meaning a run in bobsleighing, itself a fact known to a small percent of the English-speaking world. German, probably Swiss-German, its use here obscure even then. Dineth is unlikely to have competed in bobsleighs but he does practise 200 words per day from the official Scrabble dictionary. This reading habit is intensive training of a special order, eliminating the common assumption that players live on an intake of encyclopedias and novelese, another word Dineth put in place on his winning way. Authors of novelese, defined as writing characteristic of poor novels, bland and formulaic, might envy his word power while questioning how many of these words would ever make it into their own, or any, fiction. Latter day Joyces could well concur. Sri Lankan now living in Melbourne since February, Dineth has competed against many Australians. One player, Carol Johnsen, says Dineth is “an astounding player. The tiles just flowed for him. He got the X and the Z and the Q and they all went in the right places.” Which goes someway to answering our question. He uses his double and triple vocabulary to match double and triple word scores in a highly scientific manner, lending new meaning to the word computerate. Minceur, a French word for thinness that has entered English as low-calorie cuisine, was another of his winners. But the skill goes past knowledge of the word to where the power letters can capitalise, or grow fat if you will, by strategic placement on power squares. Only particular kinds of histrio (an archaic word meaning actor) will have that blend of aptitudes and talents, memory and attention, added to which they must keep in training. It is not enough to rely on postering, that is all the main words that send the message. Postering is another word the Scrabble histrio Dineth used in his win in Nairobi But he won by possessing words, any word but in fact the right word, to suit the occasion in play provided by the unique crossword puzzle combination confronting him in real time. It is as though all available words are equal on a level-playing field, their use being not communication or feeling or the necessities of words in the moment, but purely their perfect suitability during a game played on an enormous rebus. Dineth, his friends and colleagues, engage in a high-level language game that, long ago, broke the boundaries of an enjoyable pastime where family and friends test their English vocabulary. They are racing down their own chosen lauf.

 

Weakly

 August 14 Word of the Day: Weakly

 

Test cassettes for viruses get more sophisticated. Ailing this week, I returned to memories of lockdown tests: the swirl of the swab, sting in the nostril, goo in the extraction funnel, dropper on the test plate. “The RSV, Adv, Flu A/B & Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Combo Test is a lateral flow immunoassay based on the principle of the double antibody sandwich technique,” read the tissue-thin instructions, convincingly, extracted from the self-testing box purchased at the pharmacy. Expecting, even as I expectorated into a man’s large handkerchief, that Flu-A would register in the control panel bright red, instead a feint pink line appeared against Sars-Cov-2. This meant Positive, according to the tissue-thin pamphlet (See ‘Pamphlet’ this month, August 8 opening “Beloved of all…” for reverent description of such vital ephemera), but only what is termed Weakly Positive. I would see Red with completely Positive. This ‘Weakly’ position was signified by the pale pink band, scarcely visible, in the panel. I employed a magnifying glass to confirm this interpretation. The unusual flu symptoms of the past few days -sniffles, aches, pains universal, pulsing neck veins – suddenly made sense. They were covid symptoms, ‘Weakly’ because this year I had already had a covid shot, leaving me to think how badly I’d be suffering if I had not. ‘Weakly’, not weekly, as ‘weekly positive covid’ is, by definition as we and the world knows, impossible, the contracting of the virus making one immune for some months from further infection. So here I sit in my ‘weakly’ state which, according to current iso instructions from government and health, lasts no more than seven days. One may walk the streets but a mask is advisable near people. Stay at home and rest up. Having passed seventy, seven days is a reasonable quantity of measure, a foreseeable effort with a completion. I can practise being weakly positive. Not negative, which is not helpful, can hinder and distract, even be harmful and self-consuming. Nor completely positive, which is exhausting and a little unreal and possibly leads to quixotic or over-enthusiastic misjudgements. The panel is in, and it says be weakly positive. Potter around the place. Choose the best arrangement or the best view or best angle. Sleep at every hour when sleep suggests itself as an option. Reading matter may be negative, positive, anywhere on the spectrum, pamphlets, as long as it is read in a weakly positive manner. Pillows puffed up in bed in a warm room facilitates this style of reading. As day follows night, the longer I stay weakly positive the sooner I will recover from the reading listed Weakly Positive. No more aches and pains.

Auriferous

 August 13 Word of the Day: Auriferous

 

A Glossary of Everyday Colours

 

umbrageous

shady; yielding shade

“purple paths umbrageous in white heat”

 

testudineous

resembling the shell of a tortoise

“a deliberately slow reader, his text reflected in testudineous frames”

 

quiddany

marmalade; confection of quinces made with sugar

“their hi-vis breakfast made a queue of quiddany”

 

plunket

a kind of blue colour

“the sea was as plunket as they had ever seen it”

 

melliferous

productive of honey

“melliferous the clouds at sunrise”

 

lutarious

living in mud; of the colour of mud

“the wash-up is a fashion for lutarious home exteriors”

 

holland

fine linen made in Holland

“japan the master’s gold landscape, his clouds holland”

 

herbescent

growing into herbs

“in watercolour she had perfected herbescent abstraction”

 

erubescent

reddish; somewhat red; inclining to redness

“angry traffic halted at erubescent lights”

 

darkling

a participle, as it seems, from darkle, which yet I have never found; being in the dark; being without a light; a word merely poetical

“a blackness darkling where naught may be found”  

 

cerulifick

having the power to produce a blue colour

“musicians famed for their cerulifick techniques”

 

auriferous

that which produces gold

“acacias again auriferous in August”

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]