Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Deviance
So I don't have the most extensive vocabulary in the world, but as a chemist, I am not required to have one. That's why I haven't had a spelling/vocab test in roughly 7 years. And even then it is specialized vocab and not general.
I bring this up because the esteemed blogger Rob used the word "milquetoast" the other day. No clue what that meant so I looked it up. And here is what dictionary.com says:
milquetoast - One who has a meek, timid, unassertive nature.
[After Caspar Milquetoast, a comic-strip character created by Harold Tucker Webster (1885-1952).]
The whole word history is linked here:
milquewha?
That was one thing that Ang didn't or isn't liking about Tom Robbins book "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates." And his prose is too flowery. It is but I like it, to a point. His assonant paragraphs are a little crazy and I just skim over them. After 4 or 5 "B" words, I get his point.
But he also has a quite sizeable vocabulary and uses it freely. I should have written down the words so that I could've looked them up and bettered myself, but I didn't. Maybe because I didn't want to, maybe I knew I would never use them, maybe I'm not taking the SATs any time soon. 1240, thank you very much. I'm slightly above average!
And speaking of tests, my lack of vocab and math fortitude shone through when I got my GRE scores back also. The GRE is the graduate record examination (had to look that up, what's a record examination?) and when I took it was scored out of 2400 points. 800 in vocab, math and analytical thinking. Don't remember the order but I do remember my scores. Around 510 in verbal, 560 in math, and 770 in analytical thinking. Now apparently the analytical part is a written essay so I'm wicked glad that I took it when I did. I'm borrowing wicked from April, but I'll give it back when I'm done.
So basically, me no talky good, me no addy good, but I can think up a storm.
I bring this up because the esteemed blogger Rob used the word "milquetoast" the other day. No clue what that meant so I looked it up. And here is what dictionary.com says:
milquetoast - One who has a meek, timid, unassertive nature.
[After Caspar Milquetoast, a comic-strip character created by Harold Tucker Webster (1885-1952).]
The whole word history is linked here:
That was one thing that Ang didn't or isn't liking about Tom Robbins book "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates." And his prose is too flowery. It is but I like it, to a point. His assonant paragraphs are a little crazy and I just skim over them. After 4 or 5 "B" words, I get his point.
But he also has a quite sizeable vocabulary and uses it freely. I should have written down the words so that I could've looked them up and bettered myself, but I didn't. Maybe because I didn't want to, maybe I knew I would never use them, maybe I'm not taking the SATs any time soon. 1240, thank you very much. I'm slightly above average!
And speaking of tests, my lack of vocab and math fortitude shone through when I got my GRE scores back also. The GRE is the graduate record examination (had to look that up, what's a record examination?) and when I took it was scored out of 2400 points. 800 in vocab, math and analytical thinking. Don't remember the order but I do remember my scores. Around 510 in verbal, 560 in math, and 770 in analytical thinking. Now apparently the analytical part is a written essay so I'm wicked glad that I took it when I did. I'm borrowing wicked from April, but I'll give it back when I'm done.
So basically, me no talky good, me no addy good, but I can think up a storm.
# posted by Seth @ 7:16 AM 
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