Monday, June 30, 2008

Re-Searching, a Novel Thing

It’s time again to do a little research for the novel. All novels require some amount of research. I didn’t mention it in my previous post about How I Work. All part of the process. This novel, especially, demands tons of it.

Now I’m curious about REsearch. How can it be RE if I didn’t do the searching for this bit yet? Its cousin of course, is Rehearsal. Is the first “rehearsal” a hearse? Um…wait…
[I think Sunshine already stated the "rehearse" oddity in a comment somewhere... or she told it to me before.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Completely unrelated, but totally similar... Doc Holiday and I were hanging out tonight and he said that he was feeling non-plussed . This got me to wondering. Can one simply be plussed ? And if so, what would that be like? Calm?

Peter Von Brown said...

I should start keeping a list of these. I had been all set to give my definition of plussed when I heard the cautionary words of Inigo Montoya. I decided to check it. Sure enough, nonplussed (no hypen) does not mean what I thought it means. Nonplussed - completely puzzled; bewildered. All this time I'd thought: Nonplussed - Not swayed one way or the other, "under-whelmed" Live and learn.

Peter Von Brown said...

I fell into a Dictionary again. I had to look it up. As I suspected, it doesn't actually follow the "re" prefix. Rather it is derived from from Old French for "to search closely" recerche
ONe mystery solved, but so many remain...
Thank goodness.