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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/action/view/entry_id/1011445
Rated: 13+ · Book · Experience · #2223922
A tentative blog to test the temperature.
#1011445 added June 7, 2021 at 11:51am
Restrictions: None
The Meaning of...
The Meaning of…

I was thinking about the current hiatus that SCREAMS!!! is on, realising how much I’d come to depend on it for inspiration on the story-writing front, when I was arrested by that word, “hiatus.”

Yes, we use it all the time these days to mean a break in a continuous sequence, but I had a feeling there was another meaning too. Was this another case of modern usage crowding out an older meaning? I hurried to Miriam-Webster to see what kind of words it could say.*

Turns out I was more correct than I had imagined. Right at the end of its little discourse on the subject, MW admitted that it also meant “the occurrence of two vowel sounds without pause or intervening consonantal sound.” Note the important distinction indicated in that phrase “without pause.” Quite clearly, this was an alternative meaning for the word “hiatus” that meant exactly the opposite of our more commonly understood meaning. Far from just meaning a break in a sequence, the word can also indicate the lack of a break.

At some time in the distant past, my brain must have come across this alternative meaning and stored it for no apparent reason. Unless it was purely to nudge my certainty of its more popular meaning with the suspicion that this wasn’t the whole story.

Never ignore the proddings of the unconscious mind - there’s always a reason for it.


* Quote from Bob Dylan -
“went to the doctor the very next day
to see what kinda words he could say.”



Word count: 235

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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/action/view/entry_id/1011445