Diary of a Word Nerd

The Origin of Jumbo

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 9 Comments

It’s really cool when you’ve been blogging about words long enough that your children suggest Word Nerd Words to feature. How’s that for validation? 🙂

My son found an interesting story behind the word “jumbo” in the short story collection Guys Read: True Stories. If you, like my son, enjoying learning about words, join the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme, where bloggers share new words they’ve discovered while reading.

I’m sure you’ve heard of “jumbo” before, but do you know where it comes from? Is there a Latin root to explain jumbo? Nope.

Photo credit: Stuart Bassil via Flickr CC-BY

Jumbo, noun, a very large specimen of its kind; or adjective, very large

Origin: Jumbo was the name of a huge elephant exhibited by P.T. Barnum in his circus. First known use 1883. (Merriam-Webster)

This shouldn’t be confused with mumbo jumbo, meaningless or superstitious words or activity. This term comes from Mumbo Jumbo, a masked figure among Mandingo peoples of western Africa.

Who says you don’t learn anything reading fiction?

Word Nerd Note: My son enjoyed the Guys Read collections. If you need book suggestions for a guy in your life (of any age), check out the Guys Read website. It’s run by a community of dudes who believe that guys will read when given books that interest them. The site has tons of information, including great reviews and book lists like “Classics that Actually Hold Up” and “People Being Transformed into Animals.” See my full, adoring post on Guys Read here.

Word Nerd Workout

Since it’s standardized testing season, let’s try an analogy. No need for the kids to have all the fun. 😉

taciturn: laconic :: jumbo : _____________

See how I worked in some vocab review? Thanks for “playing” with me.

Improving vocabulary

What Does Capacious Mean?

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

My friend Valerie shared a Word Nerd Word she came across while reading: capacious. Then, funny thing, it turned up in the audio book I was listening to, Halt’s Peril, The Ranger’s Apprentice, Book 9. Clearly, I was meant to learn this word!

If you like to learn new words, join the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme in which bloggers share new words they’ve learned from their reading.

Valerie originally found capacious in Everything She Thought She Wanted by Elizabeth Buchan:

Charlie was right, but all I could see were the wardrobes of Lucy Thwaite and her trapped sisters waiting to imprison me in their sad smells and capacious misery.

I don’t have the exact quote from Halt’s Peril, but it had something to do with a capacious cloak. Have you guessed the meaning yet?

Capacious \kə-ˈpā-shəs\ adjective from the Latin capac-, capax, capere (also associated with capacity)

Containing or capable of containing a great deal;

Merriam-Webster.com does a nice job of comparing synonyms to highlight subtle differences in meaning. While ample and spacious are synonyms for capacious, ample implies greater than adequate size or amount, spacious means expansive length and breadth, and capacious suggests being able to hold or contain more than average, like a capacious suitcase.

Word Nerd Workout

Use capacious in a sentence and show me you get the difference between capacious and spacious or ample. My example:

My son’s capacious back pack holds his laptop, three binders, and his lunch box, and, I swear, weighs more than I do.

Seriously, it's huge! — Seriously, it’s huge!

Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!

Awesome Young Adult Books/How to encourage reading/News from book business

Three Ideas for Getting Kids to Read

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 6 Comments

Looking for ways to get your kids excited about books, especially with summer break approaching? The Word Nerd is here for you. This week (May 2-8, 2016) happens to be Children’s Book Week, and the organizers have tons of ideas for encouraging some bookish enthusiasm. To see them all, visit the Children’s Book Week site. I’ve highlighted three here for you:

Idea #1: Get the right books

The best way to get kids to read? Put books in their hands. On their beds. In their backpacks. Unfortunately, it can be hard to choose ones they’ll like. Enter the Children’s Choice Book Awards, the only national book awards program in which kids and teens choose their favorites. A panel of librarians, book sellers, editors and other literary folk choose finalists, then the kids vote.

The polls are closed for 2016 books, but you can check out the Awards site for past winners (and reading ideas). The 2016 winners will post sometime during Book Week, but here are some of the 2016 finalists, by category:

Elementary school:

Clark the Shark: Afraid of the Dark
To the Sea
I’m Trying To Love Spiders

Middle Grade:

Backlash
The Terrible Two
Hilo Book 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth

Teen:

All the Bright Places
P.S. I Still Love You
Red Queen
We All Looked Up

Past winners/finalists include:

Middle Grade:

El Deafo (see my review)
Sisters
The Dumbest Idea Ever

Teen:

We Were Liars (see my review)
One
Cress

Idea #2: Bookish Activities

Bookweekonline.com has a ton of great ideas for book related activites, including:

A down-loadable bookmark created by Cece Bell, author of El Deafo.
Story starters
Word finds and crossword puzzles with bookish themes, like “Author, Author” and Children’s Choice Award Winners.
(I’m going to print up story starters and puzzles for our 10 hour road trip to Florida next month. 😉 )

Idea #3: Stage a Read-In

This is the boldest book activity I’ve seen: an entire high school having a “Read-In” during Children’s Book Week. The site describes everything you’ll need to stage a “Read-In”, including a detailed schedule. The Read-In takes a little over an hour and includes thirty minutes of silent reading time book-ended with teacher/librarians reading aloud. Non-academic staff should participate too, promoting the notion that “everyone reads”.

Although I can see the challenges in this scenario, I think it would be a powerful way to promote reading. Perhaps a local non-profit could provide some books for those who wouldn’t normally have any. Unfortunately, Children’s Book Week always occurs the first week of May, just when my local school system is gearing up for standardized testing. Perhaps I could suggest they do it after all the tests, during those last two weeks of school when teachers are showing movies or running field trips.

When I was in elementary school we had something like Read-Ins: “USSR”- uninterrupted silent sustained reading. Interesting acronym for the 1980s. On designated USSR days, we all read silently in our classrooms for twenty minutes.

Do you know of any special activities to promote children’s reading in your community, especially during Children’s Book Week? Will you try any that I’ve listed?

Thanks for getting bookish with me!

How to encourage reading

Vocab from Washington DC: Stanchion

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

We were a weary, well-traveled crew of parents, administrators, and eighth grade students, trudging through the polished halls of the US Capitol. Our guide led us into the domed “Rotunda” room, filled with statues and paintings of our Founding Fathers, and firmly instructed us to “stand to the right of the stanchion.” Well, if The Word Nerd didn’t know what a stanchion was, I’m sure the eighth graders didn’t.

Luckily, we figured out where to gather. But I had to follow-up.

If you like to learn about new words, join the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme at Bermuda Onion. Bloggers share words from their reading that have caused them to reach for the dictionary. (Or, more likely, the dictionary app.) 😉

Stanchions and velvet ropes in preparation for the 37th G8 summit in the Centre international de Deauville, France. Guillaume Paumier via Flickr CC-BY

Stanchion \ˈstan-chən\ noun, from French Old French estançon, diminutive of estance: stay, prop

an upright bar, post, or support (as for a roof or a ship’s deck)
a device that fits loosely around the neck of an animal (as a cow) and limits forward and backward motion (as in a stall)

Thanks, Merriam-Webster. Now we all know the fancy name for the poles that hold velvet ropes and tell us where to stand or line up.

Here’s another cool picture of stanchions, taken at the State Capital in Richmond, VA.

Photo Credit: OKFoundryCompany via Flickr CC-BY

I didn’t get a picture of the stanchions inside the Capitol, but I got this nice shot on the outside… I believe we can call the poles framing the tulips “stanchions”…

Word Nerd Workout

Can you share other interesting architectural terms, like parapet or buttress?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!

Appreciating Poetry

Poem in Your Pocket Day

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 3 Comments

Today, April 21, 2016, is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, another way to celebrate the 20th annual National Poetry Month.

Today, I’m crammed on a bus full of chaperones and 8th graders. We’re on our way to explore the sights in Washington, D.C., but that won’t stop me from trying to convince you that

Poetry is COOL, ya’ll!

Humor the Word Nerd and spend a little time with a poem today. To make it easy for you, I’m sharing this poem and daring you to print it up, put it in your pocket, and pass it along to family members, coworkers, and friends. It’s short, lovely, and uplifting. If the pocket bit is too daunting, at least you can share it on social media!

I’ll be looking for it…

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

By Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea:

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

What poem might you carry in your pocket today?

Thanks for getting poetic with me!

Who I Am

Who I Am Project: How I’ve Changed Since Childhood

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Most mornings, when the “Goodreads Quote of the Day” pops up on my iPhone, I smile, or feel inspired. But this one hit me like an accusation:

The words taunted me: where has your inner child gone?

My name, Julia, means youthful, and true to form, I surround myself with younger people. Through all of my occupations and positions, (teacher, physical therapist, coach), children have been the consistent feature. And yet, I worry my own “child” has gotten lost.

I don’t have any siblings, and although I always wanted more kids around when I was younger, the lack of companionship nurtured a great gift: creativity. Out of necessity, I became very good at entertaining myself. In grade school, I created elaborate schemes that included Barbies, Fisher-Price figures, and random pieces of furniture. When I entered adolescence, my creativity manifested itself in sketch books. Pencil and paper were my favorite mediums, although I fancied acrylic paint as well. Difficult subjects like glass, ribbons, and bubbles fascinated me. I loved exploring the coiled lines of a bow atop a present or how glass bends a flower stem.

The demands of marriage and family buried that part of myself until recently, when one of my children was working on an art project, and I pulled out a few of my old sketch books. As I flipped through the pages of an older book, my son said, “Wow, Mom, these are good.”

My drawings spoke to me too. They whispered, somewhat bitterly, “Where have you been?”

I’ve been changing diapers and doing laundry. Balancing checkbooks and color coding sports schedules.

I closed the sketch book, but I couldn’t forget. The shock helped me realize something:

Yes, motherhood consumes much of my time, and hours spent taking care of my kids are hours well spent, but I can’t lose myself amid the demands. Since I don’t have endless carefree afternoons like I did at age ten, finding time for creativity, which currently comes into my life as lines of fiction or clicks of the shutter, demands self-discipline and self-love, but it’s necessary. It’s who I am.

I will make sure my inner child thrives alongside my offspring.

And someday, when there isn’t as much laundry because there aren’t as many children at home, I will again fill the lonely places with strokes of my paintbrush.

Thank you Dana for the Who I Am writing project. This month’s prompt has been especially timely as busy end of the school year schedules and the demands of soccer season threaten to drown the creative child inside me.

If you’d like to participate in the Who I Am project, visit Dana’s blog, Kiss My list.

How have you changed since you were a child?

Thanks for getting thoughtful with me!