 I recently had to quarantine for 14 days having returned from Luxembourg. It was quite a lonely experience but strangely therapeutic at the same time.
Being a word nerd, I got to thinking about how to describe my experience – a clear sign of too much time alone - but aren't we all thinking about our quarantine memoirs?! Here’s an A-Z smattering - not too uplifting: ❌Acedia: Listless, uncertain, anxious ❌Agromania: Intense desire to be in open spaces ❌Clinomania: Excessive desire to stay in bed ❌Crassulent: Obese ❌Deliration: Madness ❌Eleutheromania: Manic desire for freedom ❌Encraty: Self control ❌Hesternopothia: Yearning for earlier times ❌Hyperphagia: Eating too much (hence the crassulent state!) ❌Incabinated: Confined 🆘Loimography: A study of epidemics ❌Quarantine: From the Italian ‘quaranta’ (40). In 1377, the Great Council established a 40-day isolation period to avoid the spread of plague ❌Tristifical: Sad ❌Xanthippe: Ill-tempered woman ❌Yapness: Hunger ✅Virucide: Killing of viruses ❌Vizard: Mask ❌Woolage: Untidy hair ❌Zaftig: Full, rounded figure
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 Here’s a quick guide:
Write one to ten in words and then use numerals, except if in the same sentence: ❌ My LI post was liked by nine but viewed by 56 ✔️ My LI post was liked by nine but viewed by fifty-six (don't forget the hyphen between tens and units) If writing about ages, always write in numerals but don’t forget to hyphenate: ❌ The oldest person in the world is 117 years old ✔️ The 117-year-old man is the oldest person in the world Temperatures should be written as an abbreviation with the degree symbol and no space: ❌ 46 degrees C ✔️ 46˚C Years should be elided using the en (long) dash: ❌ 1921-1922 ✔️ 1921–1922 Page numbers should be elided using the en dash: ❌ pp. 345-6 ✔️ pp. 345–6 It’s always better to write decades in full unless the century is very clear: ❌ The ‘40s and ‘50s ✔️ The 1940s and ‘50s And no apostrophe before or after the s! ❌ Life in the 40’s … ❌ Life in the 40s’ … ✔️ Life in the 1940s … When writing about ‘centuries’, remember when to hyphenate. Compounds used as adjectives should be written with a hyphen: ❌ The eighteenth-century was a time of revolution ✔️ The eighteenth-century revolutions ... |
Melanie @ Take it as read
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