Monday, April 16, 2007

sleepy word fun

i'm in the middle of writing up a dream in my writing blog, and i was riding on a bus. i said:
my mystery friend debarks.
now that looked fine at first, but a paragraph later, when it was time for me to exit, all of a sudden i thought: debarks? is that really a word? isn't it really disembark?

turns out i was right (hah, i typed 'write' first). debark is an old form of disembark.

me love knowing words.

6 comments:

Jennie said...

I did not know that. In my neck of the woods, 'debark' means 'surgically removing the vocal chords so a dog can no longer bark.' Not as horrific as it sounds; it means lots of dogs (including shelties, who cannot stop barking) can stay with their owners rather than be impounded as a noise nuisance.

Could this comment be longer?

heather said...

you know the best part about your comment is that i almost included my additional thought, after wondering if it was a real word, of: or would that just be making a dog unable to bark?

Kelly said...

You know how I feel about words, Heather, especially after my latest blog post. The word is delightful enough but the fact that it came to you in a dream is even more enticing.

Maybe this was some past-life vocabulary recall.

heather said...

past life vocab! i love it!

well i would love it if that were true. i didn't use the word debark in the dream, just used it in my description of the dream. still. ruff ruff!

Dharma said...

Past life vocab recall - too funny!
See I thought when first reading - odd usage or something but sure. Then I thought of the dog thing. Then as I started writing I remembered "debark" is also a term in the wood industry (another thing learned in a relationship).

(Did I beat Jennie in length?)

heather said...

i'm sorry, jennie beat you by 5 words. but thank you for adding to my lexicon a little further. ;-)