Delores E. Topliff
The most fun college class I’ve created and taught so far was
when students including my oldest son asked me to put together a college vocabulary
class so their skills could grow. I found a great book and we were off and
running. Call me sentimental, but I still have a few fun student compositions from
their related writing exercises. “Take the 25-30 vocabulary building words we
studied this week and incorporate them into a single story,” I’d say—and they
did. The best book I found then that I haven't improved on is Vocabulary For the College Bound by
Levine, still available in book form, PDF, and even on You Tube.
My enthusiastic students even acted out or pantomimed some word
stories and we had to guess what was going on. For example, the Arms Race involved
students racing across our classroom wiggling their arms. One student, now a mother herself, had a classmate lure me to my back porch while she hid behind
my ideally-located upstairs window with an ice-cream bucket containing water
with yellow food coloring and a few wisps of toilet paper floating in it to
make it convincing when I unwittingly got into position for her to dump it on
me. A courageous co-conspirator hid behind a nearby building with a video camera capturing my response. That week involved the vocabulary word Garde lieu, one of their favorites. It means “Guard yourself,” or more
colloquially, “Watch out below,” rising from the historic practice of
carrying chamber pots outside to dump them, or in cities tossing the contents
out of windows into streets below. Therefore city streets had gutters at
their edges and gentlemen walked on the outsides of streets, hopefully
wearing raincoats or capes, while their companions were protected by walking closer
to buildings.
This re-enactment was a great success as I was ambushed, but not
totally drenched. Those students passed my course but the video tape showing my reaction was confiscated by our college administrator and disappeared.
I suppose it’s nice to be highly regarded and make an impression on students. Most
of us remain friends welcome in my home and I love visiting theirs.
Another origin that surprised us was “curfew,” and our college
had one. It literally means a signal, usually with a bell, announcing the start of time restrictions. In medieval Europe it meant ringing a bell at a specific
evening hour to announce time to cover or extinguish household fires. That’s the
exact word meaning in its French origin—shut the draft on the fireplace or stove
to prepare for night and send visitors home.
I love words and their meanings. They help me grow in vocabulary and increase reading and writing enjoyment. Please share the word origin
of one of your favorite words to increase interest for the rest of us.
Yesterday, I said I felt logy. This was a word that Gloria and her boys had never heard. I was sure it was a recognized word. I found out that logy or loggy comes from a Dutch word log, which meant sedentary, or immobile. there was also another idea that it came from a Greek word. At any rate, it means like I felt yesterday, kind of lazy and with no energy.
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