posted
So, I suppose if this is too lame the thread will die a swift and mercilous death. I was trying to think of a fun (i guess a nerdy sort of fun) way to incorporate some grammar/vocabulary building excercises.
So here is what we will do(Kathleen please feel free to move this if it is in the wrong forum)
I will start. The following poster will incorporate three words left by his/her predecessor into a few sentences or a paragragh adhering also to the theme left by the previous poster.
And away we go
Theme or premise: Goblin Fodder
Words: Arbitrate Ephemeral Isipid
After infiltrating the Gully dwarve village deep within Mout Kendor, the mage found himself being revered. The Gully Dwarves considered him their new ruler. He found himself in the midddle of every arbitration. Ludgzda,the one with a mole on top of a mole on her nose, and Bupu, the one who called the mage 'purdy man', were squabbling over a dead rat. "It's mine." "No, it mine" "Silence." He shouted, ending the ephemeral squirmish. "Shirak!" He cast a spell that set the rotting carcass ablaze. Then he swept up the ashes and divided them between the two awestruck Dwarves. He grew bored of thier insipid existence and wished they could take him to the dragon's lair.
Ok, so here we go. Have fun. And Keep It under thirteen lines!
Theme:Monkeys in space
Words:Lucid,prevaricate,saturnine
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited October 15, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited October 20, 2009).]
posted
Your explanation is less than lucid, but you did not prevaricate, at least not anyway I could tell. I don't know if you're saturnine or not, 'cause my dictionary had three different definitions for it, none of which was what I'd thought from seeing the word used in context here and there---I thought it related to complexion. I suppose you won't suffer the ordeal that Ham and Enos and associated company went through...
posted
Hmm... I think we have to stick to the theme better. After all, just a random sentence using the right definitions of the words doesn't really flex our vocabularical muscles much, does it? But trying to incorporate a scene into a theme, whether artic bananas or whatever, that would be an ordeal. So here is what I recommend, rather than just adding sentence by sentence in a flood of non-related terms, why don't we write a SCENE, rather than "a few sentences or a paragraph," with the prompt of the theme offered by the previous writer? I'd blush at the suggestion that I just evaded that, but nobody could tell because I have dark complexion...
Theme: sibling rivalry
Exacerbate, oblong, adverbial
[This message has been edited by Teraen (edited October 16, 2009).]
posted
Jen hunched over the picnic table, struggling to keep her homework from blowing away. The breeze tugged at her hair and flipped up the corners of her papers. She thought of moving back inside, but Tommy, her little brat of a brother, would still be watching his afternoon cartoons. How was she supposed to concentrate on adverbial clauses, with all that racket?
A familiar squish sounded in the grass behind her. Jen whirled in time to see Tommy launch an oblong balloon, heavy with water. It wobbled in its slow arc and then rushed to meet her upraised arms. The splash soaked her shirt. A whirl of pages flew past, scattering across the yard. And to exacerbate the situation, her brother released the dogs.
Theme: Predestination/fate
Rapine, kinesthesia, infelicity OR felicity
[This message has been edited by MrsBrown (edited October 17, 2009).]
posted
It, at first felt like deja veu.Pastwatch made it possible to study history as it happened. Yet, I became engrossed. Watching the rapine and murdering of the village...My village, I became aware of my past incarnation. There she was...watchin me slain by the Mongol invaders. I had to go back to her.
I came to after travelling through the portal. Slowly kinesthesia returned and my senses enlivened. I had to find her...to regain my felicity
quote: The press labeled P.C. McTaggart a misfit misogynist with archaic views, and so missed the point entirely. The good constable simply aspired to the civility of an earlier era, he told himself, and on arriving at a premises aimed for an indelible impression, either on the inhabitants, or the door.
Unfortunately, as McTaggart's cultivated exterior was intended for human observation, the impression he made on the three robots currently engaged in a game of Texas Hold'em seemed to consist only of a laser scan and a tactless filing of data.
Tempted briefly to observe the spectacle before him, McTaggart recalled that watching robots play cards was, in the realm of entertainment, on a par with watching dice roll themselves. Incapable of guile, they simply played their hands like the probability calculators they were. He cleared his throat.
Theme: Should fairies aspire to space travel?
Words: Escutcheon, Abstemious, Raconteur
[This message has been edited by BenM (edited October 19, 2009).]
posted
"Should fairies aspire to space travel?" The raconteur paced across the stage slightly ahead of the arc of the spotlight. "What do you think, Madam?" He pointed at one matron nervously fingering her pearls while catching the eyes of the slyph sitting right behind her, "Or you?"
He spun on a meticulously polished heel, and continued, "Yes, you will leave here tonight and return to your estucheon encrusted manor houses, but the fairies? Hah! They will still sleep, alone and cold. Living an abstemious life devoid of the opulence that you so enjoy, never to know the joys of space."
Theme: People in glass houses need a lot of windex words: odeum, forthputter, shrip
posted
(Edited to add:I sent this away only to find that I was trumped by ten minutes. I don't have time to write a different one. so move on.)
The raconteur sat down slowly and took a deep breath. Deep for a fairy that is, and a small fairy at that. His name was Hormsky, and he was a storyteller. His biggest problem since joining the crew of the Herald was his title. Daily, he was snubbed in the mess, conversations stopped when he entered a room, and he found himself the butt of every nasty rumour. What had he done to earn this? Nothing. It was the title.
As a fairy he was too small to work in the Herald's engine room, and there were plenty of bots to perform the cleaning services. Certainly he was no Soldier. He was starting to question his own aspiration to space travel. But remembered that he did have some positive attributes. He was abstemious, a must for space travel, and he was entertaining. His Coat of arms was a scroll and a pen emblazoned across a golden escutcheon. He would chronocle the voyage and entertain along the way. But why oh why was everyone convinced that he was some kind of criminal? Everyday the words came out of his mouth, "I am not a racketeer!"
Theme: higher education
Words: Loquacity, obstreperous, interlocutor
[This message has been edited by Cheyne (edited October 19, 2009).]
posted
I realize that these are just exercises, but I really must request that you add the 13-line rule to the challenge.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
(One further question - should words be findable in a dictionary? I can't find forthputter or shrip, for example, in either of two dictionaries at my disposal. Or am I not looking hard enough?)
Posts: 921 | Registered: Nov 2008
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posted
Well, Both are in the OED. My husband gives my a subscription for my birhday every year. He loves me. 8) Here are the defs with all the fun extra stuff that the OED gives about etymology. I thought these would be fun words because I recently read both of them in the Master and Commander books.
Forthputter: One who puts forth; a braggart. a1610 HEALEY Theophrastus xxiii. (1636) 79 A vanter or forth-putter is he, that boastes upon the Exchange that he hath store of banke-mony.
Shrip: verb trans. To shave, shred; to clip, lop, prune, trim.
1609 C. BUTLER Fem. Mon. K5b, Put a brimstone-match in the one end beeing slit, and the other end beeing shript sticke into the side of the hoale. 1664 EVELYN Sylva 20 Being suffered to dry in the Sun upon the Branches, and the spray shrip'd off about the decrease in August. Ibid. 103 Brush~wood which is shripped off from the branches of Copse~wood. Ibid. (1776) 155 Such as they reserve for spears in Spain, they keep shriped up close to the stem. 1881 Isle of Wight Gloss., Shrip, to clip a hedge, or cut hair close. 1893 Wilts. Gloss., Shirp, or Shrip, (1) ‘to shirp off’, to shred or cut off a little of anything; (2) ‘to shrip up’, to shroud up the lower boughs of roadside trees, to cut off the side twigs of a hedge or bush. Hence shripping vbl. n.
1634 WITHER Embl. IV. ix, I have seene such twiggs, afford them shade, By whom they were the meanest shrippings made, Of all the Wood. 1910 Spectator 16 Apr. 619/1 His [sc. a hedger's] work in some shires is known as ‘shripping’.
posted
As KDW stated, we must keep it under thirteen lines and the point of the excercise is to incorporate usable words into our vocabulary so let's try to keep it beneficial. Million dollar words are million dollar words no matter how you slice it.
Posts: 1888 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
The obstreperous prince absolutely refused to submit to the scedule I had imparted upon him. And furthermore, his loquacity disrupted the courts much to my dismay. Fits of giggling and other such misbehaviors put a blush upon my cheeks as one such instance occured just as the interlocutor was delivering his narrative to the Queen herself.
"Excerpt from the diary of the Princes tutor two days prior to his beheading"
Theme:Tangled in bureaucracy and ivy
words: Gasconade, misnomer,sedulous Keep it under the thirteen rule
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited October 20, 2009).]
quote:Trundleheart's impression as to the perspicacity of his new employers vanished on presentation with this new role. Following his celebrated portrayal as Gimli it appeared this new, humbler part was intended to elicit an inappropriate gasconade with which they might show him the door. Instead he'd accepted the part with temerity, applying himself to rehearsals in a sedulous manner: For, he concluded, Arthurian legend would simply need to change, and he prove a misnomer the designation Lady of the Lake. Stocky, sporting a waist-length red beard, a horned helm and draped in ivy, he would hand Arthur his Excalibur as Dwarf in the Vines, Broadway would swoon, and he'd be back in the big time.
Theme: conflict of opinion
Words: mien, leonine, bespoke
[This message has been edited by BenM (edited October 27, 2009).]
posted
I don't think your post went outside the 13 lines Leslie, and I'm sure your word choices were fine. But lacking a dictionary at work and being unable to find them in the free ones on the interwebs, and as the thread was getting derailed anyway, I thought I'd chip in with the question. My word choices are also from novels - when encountering words with which I'm not familiar I'll often type them into my pda for later research.
So shall we put the thread back on the rails and continue the game? I've quite enjoyed it so far.
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