New Words

One of my critique buddies scribbled "sounds trite” on my piece. I was too embarrassed to say, “What’s trite?” I sort of understood what the word meant, but I wanted a better understanding so I wouldn’t be trite again. I got up and pulled the dictionary off the bookshelf. Okay, I didn’t. I wanted to. I like books better than the computer, but instead I opened up the laptop, searched the Internet for dictionary.com. These are the things I love about the Internet. Information at your fingertips. I don’t utilize the Internet as much as I could for the very reason, I’d never get anything accomplished, other than stuffing my already full brain with more info. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Trite: lacking in freshness, archaic, rubbed or worn by use. Hackneyed; dull

synonym: ordinary

antonym: original

Okay, it’s worse than I thought. I don’t want to be ordinary and dull in my writing. Now I have to admit, I didn’t know the meaning of hackneyed either, which I want to pronounce: hack-an-eyed (sounds like something my mom would have said when frustrated with her sewing: "Oh hack-an-eyed!") but it’s hack-need, I know. And the meaning of hackneyed: made commonplace.

When I’m reading a page-turner book and come across a word I’m not quite sure the meaning or simply haven't heard before, I am too lazy to get the dictionary. I want to keep on reading. I say to myself, “Oh, I’ll go back and look that up later.” I also get the jest of the meaning based on the sentence. And as you’ve seen by what I did looking up trite, it leads to looking up another word. I’d spend all day with my nose in the dictionary.

That is a poor decision on my part—not looking up the meaning of words—and it’s no wonder my vocabulary stinks.

Now that I’m going to school for Web Development, I MUST know certain words. Some of these words aren’t exclusive to programming. These are words one should know anyway… like integer. Integer means whole number. Seems most folks know that, but I didn’t. I thought it was a programming term and wondered why that couldn’t just say whole number.

I’d like to excuse myself for not knowing integer because: A) I’m not good in Math, more so Algebra and beyond. [Ah, not really an excuse]; B) I only know basic Math [Well, there are whole numbers involved in basic Math, but I never knew integer.]; C) The last Math class that I had in 9^th grade, I was more worried about a girl in there who frightened me. And D) That Math teacher had the personality of a soap dish [and that might be giving him a little more than he deserves]; Oh and don’t forget: E) That was all the Math requirement needed to graduate from high school. [Having no real guidance, that was it for me for Math.]

Since I’m lacking in my writing due to learning coding, maybe I’ll pick a random word from the dictionary and blog about it. Increase my vocabulary and get a little writing accomplished.

What about you? Do you look up words when you’re reading?