In the words of the ancients...

Actually, my post is about what (and how) the moderns say =) You probably have a friend who's your pocket dictionary, to whom you ask the meaning of any and every word you may stumble upon. Maybe you are such a subject! Like me! What I find attractive about this is that my fellow human dictionaries and me are capable of giving more flexible definitions which may not be as accurate as the ones given by our official counterparts, but surely hit the mark more often. Bearing that in mind, I present you a little discovery of mine which has given me quite a share of new knowledge and amusement: the Urban Dictionary!

http://www.urbandictionary.com

This site works exactly like that friend of yours only instead of one person you can hear people from everywhere in the world giving their own definition of a word or expression. It's pretty useful for searching slangs and unusual expressions (e.g. expression generated in the Internet, such as "lol"). Let me give some examples:

Textrovert: a person who feels boldened when communicating by text (in opposition to doing this in person) or who can only reveal his or her true feelings in written form.

Bromance: a deep friendship between two straight males who are so close their relationship is almost a marriage

Zonked: to be in a state of extreme exhaustion or under the effect of drugs

Mouse Potato: someone who spends too much time in front of the computer (similar to 'couch potato' which refers to people who watch too much TV)

Of course, it's predictable there will be a lot of vulgarity. I'll keep from posting some of them since I know Tássio-san wouldn't be pleased by my doing so. Instead, I'll give you a couple more curiosities. By the way, some definitions you'll find in this site don't refer to words, but facts or ideas.

Mozarting: Screaming while peeing in a public urinal as to make others frightened

F'shizzle my n'izzle: A bastardised version of "Fo' sho' nigga", which is a bastardised version of "for sure my nigga", which is a bastardized version of "I completely concur my african-american brother"

French military victories: Early mistake by Google that when you typed "french military victories" it would say "No entries. Did you mean french military defeats?"

And now for a last round, I'll explain some of the expressions I used in this post:

Hit the mark: to be correct, suitable, or successful

Bear in mind: to remember a piece of information when you are making decisions or thinking about a matter ((often + that))

[Source: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com >> a good site for searching idiomatic expressions]

e.g. : it means "for example" and its cousin is "i.e." which means "that is" (when you explain the same thing with different words).

[Source: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/e.g.html >> this site has a list of common errors in English which may come in handy (be useful): http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors]

That's all folks! Hope you've enjoyed the post!

Intense inactivity? Or discrete action?

Something is comming. I now it.

Just put your patience to work while I go fetch it.

As usual

Long time no see folks!

Again, some er... short time has passed since our last update. Dio must be rejoiced. But there is always and explanation. What is it? No need to tell, some things are best left unknown.

As for a quick note on English-learning lately, I can say that I had the chance of reading The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and Elwyn Brooks White. The book is a classic on English writing. It was written in 1918, and even so was very easy to find (!). Yes, I didn't read it by chance, I was looking for the book. I was pointed to it by the references of the great book LaTeX: a Document Preparation System, by Leslie Lamport.

Even though some of the advised spelling pactices are out of date (to-day things are different, as surely as the writers of to-morrow will not spell as we do) the reading gave me a handful of interesting insights on important aspects of writing (and also of not writing). Let me tell it another way. Writing involves much more than laying down words in a gramatically acceptable way. Writing is (can't help thinking has to be) connected with communication, thus implying the existence of a recipient for the message. It is then that things get messy. As long as the main goal is to have the message conveyed, the necessity of a transparent containter for it will be highly important. The text is the container of the message, the clearer it is, the "tastiest the milk" (Paulo Feofiloff). Plainly speaking, that was the line I followed while reading the book (it may not apply directly to literary writing).

So much for this post.