Ikigai and Other Japanese “Loanwords”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a loanword as “a word adopted or borrowed from another language.” Although I don’t quite see how one language-speaking people can borrow a word (after all, how do you give back a word?), certainly ikigai is a word that in certain...
Breaking Down Ikigai’s Kanji
The word ikigai (pronounced “eeky-guy”) is a loanword from Japanese, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as: ikigai: a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living.OED In kanji, it is represented as 生き甲斐....
Wordsmiths Love Words
I ran across a word I wasn’t familiar with the other day: lapidary. After a leisurely journey with the Oxford English Dictionary, here are some of the definitions I found: Concerned with stones. rare.Of an inscription, etc.: Engraved on stone, esp. monumental stones....
How To Pronounce Ikigai?
What is the appropriate pronunciation of the word ikigai? After reviewing several online sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary’s audio file pronunciation guide and multiple TED talks, I'm comfortable in saying that ikigai is pronounced “eeky-guy.” (Ref: One...
My Favorite November Blog Post
My favorite blog post I wrote this month is Edit Like a Cat!, published on November 4th, 2021. The reason is simple: the quote I mentioned in the post “Write like a dog, edit like a cat” is both forever memorable and forever useful—and that’s a rare...
On Three
There's something called “The Rule of Odds” in design, which states that visually an odd number of items are more appealing than an even number of items. Why is this, and why does this usually manifest as 3 items, rather than 1, 5, or 7 items? First, I speculate the...
Boxing Up Twitter For the Holidays
Once a year, I take a substantial break from Twitter—I put it in a box. This year I stopped using Twitter the day before Thanksgiving and I intend to keep off of it until the day after Christmas—roughly one month. I don't do anything fancy to achieve this digital...
Thoreau: On The Noun Simplicity and Verb Simplify
It’s in Walden’s second chapter, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, that Thoreau’s famous quotes on simplicity and simplify occur. Here’s the context (italics mine): Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten...
Adopting My Own Blogging Hashtag
I’ve decided to adopt a hashtag for my blog posts for use on Twitter: #MatthewsBlog. The reason is simple. I always have a hard time with wording at the beginning of the tweets of my blog posts. “In today’s blog,” ”Today I am blogging about,” “In my blog today,” etc....
Too Much of a Good Thing?
In writing, too much of a good thing is often problematic. Clarity is not one of them.