Black Lamb

August 2011 in Black Lamb

Volume 9, Number 8 — August 2011

August 1st, 2011

The All-Turning Points Issue

In the cover story of our August All-Turning Points issue, Terry Ross tells how a demanding job changed him forever, perhaps not entirely for the better. In Just because, Elizabeth Fournier relates how her mother’s death, when she was just a girl, altered her life. Our language columnist, Joel Hess, gives us a sprightly essay on the words in English that signify transformation in Turn, turn, turn.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Turning Points Issue, Month summaries | Link to this Entry

Turn, turn, turn

August 1st, 2011

BY JOEL HESS

In honor of this issue about turning points, let us consider the development of how we English speakers express the idea of motion around an axis.

We have a plethora of words for this concept, fine-tuned according to the specifics of the turning: around a vertical axis (spin, wind) or a horizontal one (roll, tumble); involving an axis within the turning body (twirl, rotate) or extraneous to it (revolve, orbit); with a circular motion (whirl) or a spiral one (coil, spiral) or a back-and-forth one (rock, sway); with a quick motion (swirl, eddy) or a slow one (meander); with a graceful motion (pirouette) or a maladroit one (pitch, lurch). A mere glance at some of the multifarious terms we can select from indicates just how ingrained and basic a movement it is: pivot, ring, gyrate, encircle, loop, surround, gird, circumnavigate, swivel, twist, curl, curve, arc, swing, wheel, pendulum, screw, corkscrew, swerve, veer, flip, reel, spool, scroll.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by: The Editors
Category: All Turning Points Issue, Hess | Link to this Entry