The director of Common Voices Chorus, a women’s choir in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, seeks a word to denote what her group does when they get together to sing simply for the joy of singing and community-building, rather than working toward the goal of performing for an audience in the future. It’s not exactly a rehearsal, so what should they call it? Some words in English have melodious roots in ancient languages that aren’t obvious, but don’t quite fit the bill either. Symphony comes from Greek words that mean “voices together” and Latin cantare, “to sing,” gave rise to English enchantment, and accent, which refers to “song added to speech.” This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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