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 9th 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?
