Word of the Day
Bildungsroman
noun
a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
More about Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman “a novel concerned with the maturing of a young protagonist” is a direct borrowing from German. The word comprises two nouns: Bildung “formation, education” and Roman “novel.” Despite its “formation” sense, Bildung is not related to English building; rather, it derives from German Bild “image, picture,” which is cognate to Old English bilithe “image,” a term with no descendants in modern English. Roman derives via a long chain of semantic shifts from Latin Rōmānus “of or relating to Rome.” Rōmānus yielded the adjective Rōmānicus “in the Roman style or pattern,” and this became Old French romanz “story in the vernacular language” and then French roman “novel,” which German borrowed as Roman. English Roman preserves the original meaning of Rōmānus. Bildungsroman was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 1900s.
how is Bildungsroman used?
“The Chiffon Trenches” has been sold as a juicy tell-all…; revenge … in written form. It is that, kind of. But it is also a bildungsroman about an African-American boy from the Jim Crow South who made it to the front row of the Parisian fashion world by way of Interview, WWD, Ebony, Vanity Fair and, above all, Vogue.
Today, Latinx writers are writing their own versions of the bildungsroman, but with a twist. In novels like Angie Cruz’s Dominicana and Ernesto Quiñonez’s Taína, protagonists are educated not once, but twice: first, in mostly Spanish-speaking families and neighborhoods; and later, in the English-speaking society outside the home.
More about wintle
Wintle “to tumble over; capsize” is a Scottish English verb derived from early Dutch/Flemish windtelen “to revolve” (compare modern Dutch wentelen, of the same meaning). The verb windtelen is a frequentative of winden “to wind,” which makes wintle a close relative of the recent Word of the Day selection wynd; both wintle and wynd come from a Germanic source roughly meaning “to twist.” A frequentative is a type of verb that expresses repetition of an action, and while English no longer creates its own frequentatives, we used to add the suffix -le to mark this aspect. Just as winden becomes the frequentative windtelen, English scuff, sniff, and spark become scuffle, sniffle, and sparkle. Wintle was first recorded in English circa 1780.
how is wintle used?
On one occasion Mrs. Griffiths comes to the village shop early …. There is a hoar frost, the twigs are thick with glistening rime, she is well wrapped up, and she walks carefully so as not to wintle on the rimy Bargate stones of the path. She feels fresh and renewed on freezing mornings like this.
He sat up, held out his arms, and said, “Come, till I embrace you.” I took a hap, step and loup into his arms, and wintled ower beyond him in the bed, kissed him, and bade him an affectionate farewell in the meantime. I called him father ever after, and he called me son.
kinesthetic
adjective
needing to move.
More about kinesthetic
Kinesthetic “needing to move” is a compound of the Ancient Greek verb kīneîn (stem kīnē-) “to move, set in motion” and esthetic, the adjective form of the English noun esthesia “capacity for sensation or feeling.” The verb kīneîn is also the source of terms such as kinetic, a type of energy, and telekinesis, the superhuman ability to move objects with one’s mind. The noun esthesia ultimately derives from the Ancient Greek verb aisthánesthai (stem aisthë-) “to perceive,” which is the root of terms such as aesthetics, the philosophy of beauty, and synesthesia, the instinctive visualization of colors when hearing sounds. Kinesthetic was first recorded in English in the late 1870s.
how is kinesthetic used?
The idea that individuals have different learning styles, such as auditory or kinesthetic, is a pernicious myth. [Education scholar Ulrich] Boser compares it to the flat-earth myth — highly intuitive, but wrong …. One major recent review of research, among many others, stated that the authors “found virtually no evidence” for the idea.
A couple of years ago, [Kelly Rahmeier] had a child in her class with partial hearing loss. She decided then to start teaching ASL to all of her students. It quickly caught on, and the students loved it …. ASL is not only an official language used within the deaf community, but it is also beneficial for children who are more kinesthetic learners as they can connect some sort of movement with a word or concept.