“A word bearing the acute upon the ultima is known as an oxytone, one with the acute upon the penult as a paroxytone, one with the acute upon the antepenult as a proparoxytone. One which bears the circumflex upon the ultima is called a perispomenon, one with the circumflex upon the penult is a properispomenon. These terms, though formidable, will save much laborious periphrasis.”

- A New Introduction to Greek, Chase & Phillips, 1941


Needless to say, we never did master the terms, and laborious periphrasis has been our lot ever since.

Laborious Brit. /ləˈbɔːrɪəs/, U.S. /ləˈbɔriəs/

Characterized by or involving hard work or exertion; requiring much time or effort; arduous, tiring; painstaking, tiresomely difficult. Also of a physical action: performed with great effort or difficulty; slow or deliberate; heavy.

Periphrasis Brit. /pᵻˈrɪfrəsɪs/ , U.S. /pəˈrɪfrəsəz/

Chiefly Rhetoric. A figure of speech in which a meaning is expressed by several words instead of by few or one; a roundabout way of speaking, circumlocution.

- OED Online, accessed 9/1/12

Sunday, September 23, 2012

That's my first week of classes finished and to the surprise of no one, I found myself throughout it quite thoroughly conflicted by my dueling instincts of intense academic curiosity and an overwhelming predilection for procrastination and self-indulgent time management.  Even now I am writing this as an excuse not to perform household tasks that need seeing to, read endless pages of dense technical writing on human cognition, or go grocery shopping.

My groceries have been rather a sad scene.  I'm on a rather strict weekly budget (one which will certainly not accommodate my newfound appreciation for chocolate hobnobs), and my food has been rather basic to start.  Every time I conjure up some more complicated dish, I'm impeded by my scanty tool collection and unstocked cupboards.  There simply hasn't been time to accrue the sort of thing that most people have in their kitchen, the little things - baking soda, chocolate powder, red pepper, a whisk, a potato masher.  Each week I pick up something new to flesh out our sad, spacious cabinets.  One of my flatmates purchased some small plastic wine glasses - 8 for a pound - for some offensively acidic novelty fruit wines that she had picked up, with the very exciting result that we now have more than mugs and coffee pots to drink out of.  However, when I contemplated picking up some gin or whisky, I found the idea of drinking cocktails out of such receptacles on a regular basis a bit too pathetic to bear.  My alternative, three tumblers for a pound at Poundland, wasn't precisely a classier option, but I derive some satisfaction from drinking out of an actual glass.  It's a small creature comfort, like silverware that has decent heft to it.

Poundland has turned out to be overflowing with curiosities, as good dollar stores are wont to do.  It has all of the usual suspects, as well as a surprising amount of food - I don't trust poundstore eggs and milk, and I don't suppose I ever will.  The seasonal section included 'celebrity masks,' with one's options being either Justin Bieber or... some blonde fellow with a handlebar mustache that I don't believe I've ever seen before.  It's true that my curiosity is piqued when I spot foods that I have heard mention of in British media, no matter how uninspiring they probably are to eat.  I'm tempted to explore things like jaffa cakes, hobnobs, whatsits, angel delight, bovril, minstrels, etc., but I must keep in mind that neither myself nor Sainsburys are going anywhere fast.  I'm sure plenty of it will be utterly disgusting, but I won't know until I try, now will I?  Well, custard in a can pretty much speaks for itself, and I'm pretty dubious of the merits of beef tea, and I have it on good authority that Irn Bru is nigh undrinkable, but what is travel without a sense of inadvisable adventure?

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