Twitter feed

Friday, March 17, 2006

Vulgar

Still injured. Have done a couple of weights sessions and my muscles are telling me all about it. Not very happy about not being able to run. I'm sure my leg actually felt worse yesterday than the previous three days rest. It feels a bit better today, so hopefully things are on the way up. Plenty of stretching and massage now and some strengthening exercises when all the soreness is gone. I'm thinking about doing some riding to keep the fitness up. I'll get the bike out tomorrow and see if I can get it to work.

My word today is vulgar. It's not quite the correct descriptor for how my leg feels, but it is close. I like the word vulgar because of the repulsion it can illicit. After reading the history of the word, it might make me sound a bit pretentious.

vul·gar ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vlgr)adj.

Crudely indecent.
Deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.
Marked by a lack of good breeding; boorish. See Synonyms at common.
Offensively excessive in self-display or expenditure; ostentatious: the huge vulgar houses and cars of the newly rich.
Spoken by or expressed in language spoken by the common people; vernacular: the technical and vulgar names for an animal species.
Of or associated with the great masses of people; common.

[Middle English, from Latin vulgris, from vulgus, the common people.]
vulgar·ly adv. vulgar·ness n.

Word History: The word vulgar now brings to mind off-color jokes and offensive epithets, but it once had more neutral meanings. Vulgar is an example of pejoration, the process by which a word develops negative meanings over time. The ancestor of vulgar, the Latin word vulgris (from vulgus, “the common people”), meant “of or belonging to the common people, everyday,” as well as “belonging to or associated with the lower orders.” Vulgris also meant “ordinary,” “common (of vocabulary, for example),” and “shared by all.” An extension of this meaning was “sexually promiscuous,” a sense that could have led to the English sense of “indecent.” Our word, first recorded in a work composed in 1391, entered English during the Middle English period, and in Middle English and later English we find not only the senses of the Latin word mentioned above but also related senses. What is common may be seen as debased, and in the 17th century we begin to find instances of vulgar that make explicit what had been implicit. Vulgar then came to mean “deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.” From such uses vulgar has continued to go downhill, and at present “crudely indecent” is among the commonest senses of the word.

2 comments:

Tesso said...

Bummer Dave :-(

Have you discovered the joys of water running? When I had my achilles problem that's what kept me reasonably fit. I've got a feeling I was told to avoid the bike, or maybe it was avoid hills on the bike. It might be worth investigating.

Good luck. Hope we're comparing running stories again soon.

CJ said...

Sorry to hear about the injury - hope it gets better soon.

I have noticed that you've been quiet with your comments lately. I'm madly trying to catch up on blog reading tonight!

I have altered my coffee drinking habits - I have changed from drinking cappuccinos (because I seem to have had very ordinary ones lately) to drinking long blacks.

Anyway take care with that leg.