to coin a phrase
I woke up this morning with the word, "cornutableia," in my mind. I dreamed it somehow. (I didn't dream how it was spelled, though. It sounds much more impressive than it looks.) Don't bother looking it up -- it doesn't actually exist.
My groggy first-thing-in-the-morning analysis was that it meant something like a cornucopia, but on paper. It didn't take long for me to realize that "cornu" actually means "horn," and a bit of research revealed that the root for "tablet" is actually "tabula." So did I mispronounce the word in my dream? Maybe it should be, "cornutablula" instead. But does "horn-tablet" really mean anything at all?
I'm inclined to keep the original word, even if it doesn't have a real meaning. It was presented to me in my dream -- the challenge is to figure out why.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: to coin a phrase.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.waterlilies.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/916
tableia, tabula - playing around with word spellings is perfectly permissible. Also, maybe it's just me, but that seems to have the same root as tabulate, to add up or count, esp. votes. It's also famous as part of "tabula rasa," or blank slate. Maybe a cornutableia isn't literally a horn so much as a collection - a collection of writings, perhaps? Cornutableia would be a good term for a short story collection, perhaps. Or your blog, since it's largely a collection of stories. Or a collection of things that have been counted, though that's a bit esoteric and nerdy and very much something I'd come up with.