Nature does have a way of making things work and camouflage is one of them. I passed within inches of a squirrel and did not notice it until I heard it skittering toward the nearest tree and then climb up. Squirrels tend to stay on the opposite side of the tree from a threat. As a passed by the tree, the squirrel kept its eye on me an scooted its furry-tailed self around to the opposite side, in what is perhaps, the cutest way possible. Squirrels are cute, regardless of their age.
But on to the more important stuff.
Most words I have no recollection of learning. Perhaps I read them in a dictionary or in some other book. I don’t know, but most of them I’ve never had as vocabulary words. However, there are some words I distinctly remember learning and there are also some words I don’t as-distinctly remember learning. Grandmother is one of the latter. It was probably the hardest first grade, or perhaps kindergarten vocabulary words. Everyone knew what grandmother was, just not exactly how to spell it because it was so darn long. I don’t think some of us realized it was just the words grand and mother put together.
Viz is one of the words I distinctly remember learning. I looked it up after seeing it often in, you guessed it, Robinson Crusoe. That is the first and last book I have ever encountered viz. I’ve even used viz as a username for a short while after that too. I don’t remember what is means though, but looking it up again, “namely” and “that is to say” don’t sound to far off. It sounds similar to i.e. and the distinction between the two is fuzzy for me. The “completeness” of viz is appealing. If only anyone knew what that abbreviation meant.
I’ll got for another v-word and throw the adjective void into the midst. I have looked up this word many times in the dictionary and the definition never really stuck until I looked it up one last time some years after I first read the word. I had always associated the word with the noun, the spatial nothingness and it always confused me when the phrase showed up in the adjectival context. It never occurred to me that there were other forms of nothingness, such as a functional nothingness. I eventually did realize it usually preceded some sort of condition in the adjectival form. It was usually “Void if…” or “Void where prohibited.” With that, I leave a void until my next post.
This blog is void where prohibited, viz. {a complete list of places where it is prohibited, including your grandmother}.
therabbitsears blog 