Oh, I see! moments
Travel Cultures Language

SOS: Save Our Skeuomorphs!

by Joyce McGreevy on January 4, 2021

A smartphone on a sailboat contains a compass app, a skeuomorph that carries a cultural memory of an ancient invention, the nautical compass. (Photo by TheHilaryClark and Pixabay)

What smartphone app resembles a 12th century nautical tool? The answer’s due south!
TheHilaryClark/ Pixabay

Skeuomorphs “Net” Cultural Memory

As we sail into a new decade, a titanic debate continues to rock the boat from port to computer port. On one side, designers who’ve jettisoned skeuomorphs. On the other, those who are still on board with them.

Should skeuomorphs be set adrift? Or treasured because they’re anchored in cultural memory? What are skeuomorphs, anyway?

Someone holds up a digital tablet with a compass app, a skeuomorph that incorporates a cultural memory of an older compass. (Photo by TheHilaryClark and Pixabay)

Some designers dislike skeuomorphs’ ties to the past, as in this digital version
of a nautical compass.
Geralt/ Pixabay

You Can’t Just Make Up Words—Oh, Really?

by Joyce McGreevy on November 9, 2020

A woman reading the Oxford English Dictionary, a source of implicit language lessons on how to invent a word. (Image by lilbellule789 and PIxabay)

Spoiler alert: This page turner’s ending is all about the . . . zyzzyva!
lilbellule789/ Pixabay l

Language Lesson: How to Invent a Word

It’s become a sitcom trope: One character’s remark prompts another character to retort, “That’s not even a word!” or “You can’t just make up words!”

But according to the most widespread, time-honored language lore, people have been inventing words ever since the guttural grunts of one human first morphed into vocal patterns that made sense to other humans.

Let’s settle this with the world’s shortest language lesson, here.

Voilà! The Poetry of Untranslatable Words

by Meredith Mullins on September 28, 2020

Linguistic trivia says that the Inuits have 50 words for snow. But how, in languages,
do you find the one perfect word to describe something—le mot juste?
© Meredith Mullins

Wordplay with Meaning

We live in challenging times. We have had to become super-adaptable beings, asking ourselves every day how to cope with the multitude of new normals.

What changes emerge?

Have you, like most of the world, savored hyggelig and gezelligheid?

Have you searched for moments of beauty in komorebi, mångata, and psithurism?

Have you had the urge to commit to jijivisha and to integrate firgun and merak into life rhythms?

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