Deadly

 April 4 Word of the Day: Deadly

 

“DEADLY. This and ‘mortal’ are often synonymes now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound’: but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is often passive, and signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body’, or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’” Thus, Richard Chenevix Trench in his ‘A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present’ Second edition, revised and improved (London, Parker, 1859). To what extent Trench’s Victorian senses of the word have any relationship to the contemporary Australian Indigenous use of ‘deadly’ is wide open to discussion. ‘Deadly’ here is a term of highest praise: excellent, great, fantastic, cool, awesome. Emerging in the seventies, such is its widespread use that by the nineties national awards were initiated for excellence in music, sport, entertainment, and community achievement among Indigenous Australians called, very straightforwardly, the Deadly Awards. Theories for the emergence of this present sense of ‘deadly’ are based as much on guesswork and circumstance as empirical evidence. That the adjective is used in Ireland in similar positive ways is one thing, while the OED tells us that ‘deadly’ used in the English colloquial sense of extremely or excessively dates from at least the 16^th century. It’s worth keeping in mind the sense, too, of anything about which there can be no argument at all, like death itself: to stamp anything as ‘deadly’ is to say that that’s the final word. At which stage a word turns from slang into common speech is a perennial question of vocabulary. Its use in this awesome sense may and in fact does differ in meaning and cultural value in the Irish, English, and Australian contexts. The word ‘deadly’ for First Nations Australians will have significances all their own, and within the reality of the fatal impact. Trench continues: “It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later versions ‘mortal’ occurs,” then he quotes, “Elye was a deedli man lyk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis. Jam. V. 17. Wiclif.” In the Letter of James, Elijah is presented as a ‘deadly man’, which is to say mortal just like us, but that through prayer we like him can do things that are not only good, excellent, cool, but even awesome. Any body at all.  

 

 

Fuel

 April 3 Word of the Day: Fuel

 

April fuel jokes abound, come thick and fast in recent days, gush in fact, keeping gush in the vocabulary. Gush is at risk of vanishing from use. Gush is at a standstill. Plans to purchase a horse or two, now that the car will soon be off the road for months, preoccupy our minds temporarily as we sit in peak hour traffic, wondering unconsciously if peak hour traffic itself will become a thing of the past. These conjectures never get as far as thinking about the amount of fuel required of a horse. It would return us to a time on the Heidelberg Road before motor vehicles, where we chat now idly amidst plenteous other and ravenous idling cars, checking stations for the rising cost of a litre of standard. Artificially collaged images circulate online. A bus with a tea clipper fastened to its roof, sporting over thirty sails, provides the best in wind power. Convertibles converted into coaches, BMWs into buggies, Toyotas into troikas – graphics whizz past on a production line, good for a laugh. Dependence on crushed fossils meets dependence on why-oh-why wi-fi. The days when fuel was simply the wood collected for the hearth fire are found in books. We have arrived at a pretty strait. Still, as we know, April fuel jokes have a short lifespan. Strike a match, the potassium and sulphur quickly flares then burns out. The import of the joke is understood and quickly forgotten, given its shared universal meaning: fuelishness is a joke on us all. Fuelishness is a tank of petrol, here today and gone tomorrow. What’s fuel for the goose is fuel for the gander. There is no fuel like an old fuel. A fuel and their money are soon parted. It is said that a practical joke is the lowest form of wit, and if it wasn’t before it is now. Only who is the joke on, the object of the joke or the teller? Newsfeeds deliver them and commentary explains them, until this form of humour needs be put to rest. The bigliest April fuel joke though is the one about the man who started a war without telling anyone and then expected them to join in and finish it.

Rivaroxaban

 

April 2 Word of the Day: Rivaroxaban

 this is the delicate balancing act the go-slow streaming service my body ingests after breakfast the tiny orange dot in the base of a japanese teacup a dot called rivaroxaban

 riveting riviera realistically rivaroxaban

 my haematologist I have one of those too held significantly airily eccentrically the forms where I ticked all the boxes my body that is ticked and yes I pass with colours, presumably the flush in my cheek, and he will see me again at ninety he said if I need to go off at that stage rivaroxaban

 the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in command of all the letters for quite a time yet rivaroxaban

 appointments flowed easily major concerns were lowkey and operable I circulated without fuss from pillar to post popped the letter in the letterbox friends never asked anxiously and days passed without event in the days before rivaroxaban

 revealing revelling rivulets oh thankyou rivaroxaban

 let me repeat let me repeat my repute is a request to repeat and repeat what the doctor ordered for my own good and my pharmacist repeats matter-of-factly her eye keeping to the script rivaroxaban

 aches and pains lead to tests and diagnoses like everyone else our mortal flesh leads us to specialist referreds and dead certs pills and potions with top of the list once a day with food a sip of water rivaroxaban

 crossing the rubicon righto rivaroxaban

 imagine there’s no heaven it’s not easy if you try it’s a waste of time like thinking above us is only sky imagine a world without rivaroxaban

 thank god for small mercies cereal friendship without terms conversation in the kitchen lively and light a glass of fresh water breakfast and habit becoming habitual quick rivaroxaban