Saturday, June 30, 2012

Balk

balk
verb, intransitive. hesitate or be unwilling to accept an idea or undertaking
verb, transitive. thwart or hinder; prevent an individual from having something

She was ready to go online and file their taxes when the statement from the pipeline company arrived in the mail. She was enraged when she opened it and began to read. There it was again: the most incomprehensible tax form she had seen yet. Why couldn’t it be straightforward? She had marvelled all year at the large dividends the stock paid--reinvested in more of the same, by her order. After doing the previous year’s taxes, she had vowed to sell the stock so she wouldn’t have to wade through the form and its twelve pages of explanation again. So much trouble for so little gain. But she had balked at the sale when she saw how much it was earning.

This is what greed gets you, she chided herself as she looked at one page after another. This piece of mail meant she had to start the taxes over. It infuriated her: hours and hours of work--gone. Thank goodness she did the task electronically. If she still filed on paper, she would be regretting lost days.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Introducing myself, Using the verb "Abase"

abase
verb, transitive. To behave in a way so as to belittle or degrade someone.

This is an attempt to start writing a specialized blog. To choose a vibrant word, write a brief piece on it and publish that online. What to say, what to say? I heard Anne Tyler in an NPR interview yesterday say that every time she sits down to write the same thing happens: she stares at the empty page and bewails the fact that her mind is a complete blank. Sh has to force herself to write anything. That’s enouraging. She is a much-critically-praised author of numerous novels, most of which I’ve read and enjoyed. If she has to put up with the empty-brain syndrome, I guess I’m not doing too badly. She said giving up writing is not an option for her. The act of writing itself is too entertaining and satisfying for her to consider “retiring” from it.

I was talking with someone the other day about the well-worn cliché of the advertising business: that every copywriter is a would-be novelist just putting in time at the agency to support himself until he gets the idea for The Great American Novel, the execution of which will facilitate his escape into a life of self-supporting ease--a life in the country, where he will arise and sit to his next tale, with periods of contemplation of the bucolic scene out his window, or a pipe, or coffee. No longer will he have to compromise by boarding the commuter train and spending his precious days abasing his genius to sell soap or cars.

Of course, that fantasy usually remains just that.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.