word of the day: demotic

The word of the day is demotic:

1. of or pertaining to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language; vernacular:

a poet with a keen ear for demotic rhythms.

2. of or pertaining to the common people; popular.

3. of, pertaining to, or noting the simplified form of hieratic writing used in ancient Egypt between 700 b.c. and a.d. 500.

Greek dēmotikós popular, plebeian, equivalent to dēmót (ēs) a plebeian 

(dictionary.com)

"Using a demotic word like boogie precludes formal adherence to rules, except for comically incongruous effect:

"There wasn't a single item in my close that I could don with impunity, nor was there a shoe in which it would be seemly to boogie...

"Demotically speaking, we take our liberties.  How often do you expect to hear 'Whom do you think you're kidding?'?  Here again, it's the first word in the sentence - isn't that enough to give it at least a quasi-subject status?  But whom is (or is not) being kidded, and is the object (however the wide of the mark) whom someone is rhetorically failing to fool.  Still, with all those boggled attempts, we begrudge the subject its total dominion over the nominative case.  And maybe if someone's being kidded, or not, he/she has in the process acquired immunity to the prescribed case - and can go on to the next challenge: Who(m) do you think you are, anyway?"

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

Word of the day: ba

The word of the day is ba:

ba, in ancient Egyptian religion, with the ka and the akh, a principal aspect of the soul; the ba appears in bird form, thus expressing the mobility of the soul after death. Originally written with the sign of the jabiru bird and thought to be an attribute of only the god-king, the ba was later represented by a man-headed hawk, often depicted hovering over the mummies of kings and commoners alike.  (Encyclopaedia Britannica)


"There's agony in its scanning eye, its tiny
filtering teeth set in that gaping mouth, caught perversely
wide, a universal fellatio, opened to make it look more
than a shark enough; and even science will realize
that it's undead, its "ka" and "ba" fixed and lost
in equal measure, the flow of fluid not even providing
an optical illusion, no "weighing of the heart" beyond
the heartlessness of curiosity, eschatology of display."

 - John Kinsella, "Megamouth Shark", 7 March 2011 The New Yorker

Word of the day: ka

The word of the day is ka:

The name given by the ancient Egyptians to a spiritual part of a human being or a god which survived after death and could reside in a statue of the dead person. (OED)


"There's agony in its scanning eye, its tiny
filtering teeth set in that gaping mouth, caught perversely
wide, a universal fellatio, opened to make it look more
than a shark enough; and even science will realize
that it's undead, its "ka" and "ba" fixed and lost
in equal measure, the flow of fluid not even providing
an optical illusion, no "weighing of the heart" beyond
the heartlessness of curiosity, eschatology of display."

 - John Kinsella, "Megamouth Shark", 7 March 2011 The New Yorker