That was weird.
Feb. 12th, 2009 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Apparently kids aren't the only ones who can misunderstand their native language to produce charming, obvious, and totally weird constructions.
It was very windy yesterday, so much that at one point I thought the tree next to our house had fallen down because, looking out my window, I didn't see "tree, with small patches of sky", I saw "sky... and some more sky". It hadn't fallen, it had just bent very far down.
It's not nearly that windy today, but it's still blowing a bit. As Evangeline and I went to the store for some urgent goods (marshmallows, bread, and aspirin-for-the-love-of-god), she asked me if the trees would fall on her in the wind. (Some branches had fallen, and we'd seen them on the way.)
No, I say. "It's not winding as much as it was yesterday*." Not winding, of course. Winding. With a short i.
Even as I'm saying it, the dreaded thought "is that a word even?" was winding (long i!) its way through my mind. And sensible, logical arguments about understandability notwithstanding, I know perfectly well that wind-as-a-verb (short i) isn't in any dictionary... or if it is, nobody will listen to your arguments any more than they like you referring to wabes in casual conversation. (You know... if it should happen to come up. I need to get a sundial just so I can drop things in the wabe and send people to fetch them.)
Except... the rain is raining, and the snow is snowing, and the wind, therefore, should be winding. Shouldn't it?
It's a simple way to phrase it, and I think I like it. I may just use it again, and then it will be a word, even if only to me.
*After some thought, I think *that* is what I actually said, rather than my first sentence, because I remember thinking I couldn't've said it with the word windy, but I couldn't remember how I said it.
It was very windy yesterday, so much that at one point I thought the tree next to our house had fallen down because, looking out my window, I didn't see "tree, with small patches of sky", I saw "sky... and some more sky". It hadn't fallen, it had just bent very far down.
It's not nearly that windy today, but it's still blowing a bit. As Evangeline and I went to the store for some urgent goods (marshmallows, bread, and aspirin-for-the-love-of-god), she asked me if the trees would fall on her in the wind. (Some branches had fallen, and we'd seen them on the way.)
No, I say. "It's not winding as much as it was yesterday*." Not winding, of course. Winding. With a short i.
Even as I'm saying it, the dreaded thought "is that a word even?" was winding (long i!) its way through my mind. And sensible, logical arguments about understandability notwithstanding, I know perfectly well that wind-as-a-verb (short i) isn't in any dictionary... or if it is, nobody will listen to your arguments any more than they like you referring to wabes in casual conversation. (You know... if it should happen to come up. I need to get a sundial just so I can drop things in the wabe and send people to fetch them.)
Except... the rain is raining, and the snow is snowing, and the wind, therefore, should be winding. Shouldn't it?
It's a simple way to phrase it, and I think I like it. I may just use it again, and then it will be a word, even if only to me.
*After some thought, I think *that* is what I actually said, rather than my first sentence, because I remember thinking I couldn't've said it with the word windy, but I couldn't remember how I said it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 12:09 am (UTC)