Questions tagged [wording-choice]
Questions about a writer's precise selection of words as determined by a number of factors, including denotative and connotative meaning, specificity, level of diction, tone, and audience.
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Is there an in-universe explanation for the contradictory language and euphemisms used in *The Screwtape Letters*?
For example, terms like "the patient," "our Father below," and Screwtape's affectionate language towards Wormwood. It actually strikes me as oddly similar to the "doublethink&...
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Aspects of Kamala Das's Poem 'My Mother at Sixty-Six'
This poem 'My Mother at Sixty-Six' is in our curriculum and I have a few questions on this:
Why does the poet capitalise 'Young Trees'? Why not just leave it as 'young trees' as it is not a proper ...
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Did Philip Larkin use a swearword while quoting from Pym's Excellent Women?
In a letter to Barbara Pym dated 18 July 1971, Philip Larkin allegedly wrote:
I reread Excellent Women before coming away—what a marvellous set of characters it contains! Sometimes it's hard to ...
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Where can I take a deeper dive into Jane Austen's vocabulary?
I'm translating some Jane Austen into Latin, and I'm wondering whether there's a resource that would allow me to do a deeper dive into the nuances of the vocabulary she uses, especially the words that ...
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Significance of "further up and further in"?
In C.S. Lewis's Narnia grand finale, The Last Battle, one chapter is entitled "Further Up and Further In", and this phrase is repeated a great many times by various characters:
"Then [...
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Why Pallas in "The Raven"?
In Poe's famous poem "The Raven", the eponymous bird, after tapping on the narrator's window, steps smartly inside and perches upon a bust of Pallas.
Why Pallas? As far as I know, this ...
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What does "the balance of this paragraph" mean in the annotated American Gods?
In Gaiman's Annotated American Gods, the annotator often refers to the balance of a paragraph.
For example annotation #73 says "The balance of this paragraph does not appear in the first edition&...
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What does "to the sack" mean in Hunchback of Notre Dame?
What does "to the sack" mean in this context:
To the sack, to the sack!” rose the cry on all sides.
At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have described above, was ...
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Why are the non-fellow-students not referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
This is sort of the reverse of my previous question on Clint Smith's poem "The Gun". While it's blatant about referring to all of the kids as "guns", I find it interesting that the ...
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Why are all the schoolchildren referred to as guns in Clint Smith's "The Gun"?
Clint Smith's poem "The Gun" describes a school shooting from the perspective of a child. However, the central character, as well as its fellow classmates, are all referred to as "guns&...
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"Miss" as a form of address to a married teacher in Bethan Roberts' "My Policeman"
In Bethan Roberts' 2012 novel My Policeman, Marion Taylor begins working as a schoolteacher in 1957. She writes her name on the chalkboard for her students:
A moment passed as I gathered myself, then ...
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Long John Silver, "you may lay to that"
In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the "ambiguous rogue" (I saw this phrase somewhere and it's my favourite description of the character) Long John Silver frequently uses the ...
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In Ozymandias, who is the "ye" in the line "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" meant to be addressing?
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias is a well-known and oft-referenced English-language poem from the early 19th century, and purports to quote — presumably in translation from Egyptian hieroglyphs — a ...
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Understanding the nature of the footsteps imagery in Henry Longfellow's "Footsteps of Angels"
I'm trying to understand the sense of the image of divine footsteps used in Henry Longfellow's religious poem "Footsteps of Angels":
With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger ...
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Why call them the "little pointy hours"?
This is the start of James Parker's "An Ode to Being Read To", which is in October 2022's The Atlantic.
I fixed my insomnia with whiskey and audiobooks.
Seriously. I was a terrible non-...
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