abandon
verb, transitive. To give something up completely. To discontinue a scheduled event before completion. To cease to support or look after someone. To desert. To leave a place empty or uninhabited, without intending to return. To leave a vessel or vehicle decisively, as an act of survival. To condemn someone or something to a specified fate by ceasing to take an interest in or look after them. Also a noun.
Even though it was nearly noon, the light filtered through the dust on the windows was dim. Hal and Sophie paused just inside the door and looked around. Chairs were pushed away from desks as if their occupants had just gotten up to take a break. Piles of papers still filled inboxes. Hal could read the heading of the blotter calendar on the nearest desk: May, 2003. The dust roused by their entrance hung and swirled like mist.
“They abandoned this place a long time ago,” Sophie said. “I wonder why they never came back and packed any of this up.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Hal told her as he advanced to the desk with the calendar. He stood looking down at it, not wanting to sit in the long-unused chair. He hoped the calendar would furnish clues as to why the staff had suddenly left one day and never returned. Experience had taught him that calendars couldn’t always be trusted. People got busy and forgot to tear off the top page when the month ended. Hal had done it himself. There was something scrawled on the nineteenth day, however. He stooped and squinted. Reluctantly, he wiped the dust aside with the side of his palm, trying not to add it to that already thick in the air. “Hargrove 2:30,” was all it said. He read it aloud and was surprised when Sophie gasped.
“I know who that is!” she cried.
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, October 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Zag
zag
verb, intransitive. To make a sharp change of direction. Also noun. Origin: shortening of zigzag.
She knelt on the ground beside the bed. The pole bean seeds she had planted only four days ago had not only sprouted, they already had true leaves. She smiled. She was glad she had decided to try that variety: Kentucky Wonder. The first time she had planted them had been a revelation, and she had stuck with them ever since. They had climbed, flowered, borne beans and climbed some more. She had picked, eaten, frozen, and canned right up until a hard frost killed the vines, through the droughty, rainless summer and into autumn. Rarely had a cultivar impressed her so much. Now she unwould a length of jute twine from the spool and lashed it around the post at one corner of the bed. She stretched it to the post at the far corner and attached it there. She stood and knotted the free end of the twine to the horizontal she had just strung. She began to wrap twine up and down between it and the cord that ran between the posts at head height, guiding it so it zagged a few inches to the right every time it wrapped a cord. It didn’t take long before a loose trellis was suspended above the little plants. She knew she would have to help them find it, but once they did they would mount it with astonishing vigor. She grimaced at the uneven spacing and at the already-stretched horizontal cords that were closer together in the middle than they were at the ends. It wasn’t perfect, but it was cheap and it used materials she already had lying around. It would do.
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.
verb, intransitive. To make a sharp change of direction. Also noun. Origin: shortening of zigzag.
She knelt on the ground beside the bed. The pole bean seeds she had planted only four days ago had not only sprouted, they already had true leaves. She smiled. She was glad she had decided to try that variety: Kentucky Wonder. The first time she had planted them had been a revelation, and she had stuck with them ever since. They had climbed, flowered, borne beans and climbed some more. She had picked, eaten, frozen, and canned right up until a hard frost killed the vines, through the droughty, rainless summer and into autumn. Rarely had a cultivar impressed her so much. Now she unwould a length of jute twine from the spool and lashed it around the post at one corner of the bed. She stretched it to the post at the far corner and attached it there. She stood and knotted the free end of the twine to the horizontal she had just strung. She began to wrap twine up and down between it and the cord that ran between the posts at head height, guiding it so it zagged a few inches to the right every time it wrapped a cord. It didn’t take long before a loose trellis was suspended above the little plants. She knew she would have to help them find it, but once they did they would mount it with astonishing vigor. She grimaced at the uneven spacing and at the already-stretched horizontal cords that were closer together in the middle than they were at the ends. It wasn’t perfect, but it was cheap and it used materials she already had lying around. It would do.
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, October 14, 2012
Yabber
yabber
verb, intransitive. To chatter.
So much of life is nonsense: unproductive, using up time for no good reason. Commuting to jobs, whether in automobiles or on buses or trains, is a case in point. In many cases, the jobs themselves are merely ways of marking time until retirement and death. Even the things people do voluntarily fall under the heading of “Pointless.” The yabber of the schoolyard becomes the gossip around the worktable or the water cooler. The pleasantries exchanged outside the church after service are a step above that, but rarely refer to the lessons heard inside. A greeting to the pastor upon exiting, with the added comment, “Good sermon,” never fails to elicit surprise on his part. He writes it every week and delivers it with energy and verve, knowing that most of his flock won’t listen. Imagine his delight when he learns that just one of them has. It makes all the difference between his labor being “pointless” and it being meaningful. We were not placed here just to mature physically, reproduce, and die. Our minds are meant to grow, as well. They do so when we consider ideas that are not our own; when we exchange them with others and build upon them.
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.
verb, intransitive. To chatter.
So much of life is nonsense: unproductive, using up time for no good reason. Commuting to jobs, whether in automobiles or on buses or trains, is a case in point. In many cases, the jobs themselves are merely ways of marking time until retirement and death. Even the things people do voluntarily fall under the heading of “Pointless.” The yabber of the schoolyard becomes the gossip around the worktable or the water cooler. The pleasantries exchanged outside the church after service are a step above that, but rarely refer to the lessons heard inside. A greeting to the pastor upon exiting, with the added comment, “Good sermon,” never fails to elicit surprise on his part. He writes it every week and delivers it with energy and verve, knowing that most of his flock won’t listen. Imagine his delight when he learns that just one of them has. It makes all the difference between his labor being “pointless” and it being meaningful. We were not placed here just to mature physically, reproduce, and die. Our minds are meant to grow, as well. They do so when we consider ideas that are not our own; when we exchange them with others and build upon them.
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.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Xeriscape
xeriscape
verb, transitive. To landscape an area in a manner appropriate for an arid climate--requiring little or no irrigation or maintenance.
When they returned to the old place, they were astonished to find that in their absence, Nature had xeriscaped the yard. There was almost no trace of the lawn he had babied and nurtured for all the years they had lived there. It had been replaced by a patchwork of ground-hugging plants that bore no resemblance to grass, except in the sunniest areas near the road, where buffalo grass had sprung up. A collection of wildflowers that had never grown near the house before formed lush patches: Indian Paintbrush, Gaillardia, Black-Eyed Susan, Queen Anne’s Lace, Prairie Sabatia and what appeared to be a kind of wild Verbena intermixed with the bunch grass waved in the wind and made a kaleidoscope of color they had not known was possible.
“All that work,” he said. “Why did I bother?”
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.
verb, transitive. To landscape an area in a manner appropriate for an arid climate--requiring little or no irrigation or maintenance.
When they returned to the old place, they were astonished to find that in their absence, Nature had xeriscaped the yard. There was almost no trace of the lawn he had babied and nurtured for all the years they had lived there. It had been replaced by a patchwork of ground-hugging plants that bore no resemblance to grass, except in the sunniest areas near the road, where buffalo grass had sprung up. A collection of wildflowers that had never grown near the house before formed lush patches: Indian Paintbrush, Gaillardia, Black-Eyed Susan, Queen Anne’s Lace, Prairie Sabatia and what appeared to be a kind of wild Verbena intermixed with the bunch grass waved in the wind and made a kaleidoscope of color they had not known was possible.
“All that work,” he said. “Why did I bother?”
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.
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