Sleep Spent

So I was reading this Dr. Seuss cartoon (you can find a passel of them here), and I saw the word hock. And I thought, “that’s odd.” Because I’d only ever seen that word in the context of a part of a cow or pig.

Then I thought of hawking something, agressively selling or peddling. “Is this just another spelling of that?” I thought.

But no, they’re two different words. If I’ve heard “hock” (meaning “to pawn”) before, I must have assumed it was included in the definition of “hawk,” and conflated them by virtue of their homonymy.

I love our language. :-)

Oh, and another awesome word I discovered today while reading the February issue of Harper’s, which just showed up in my mailbox today: qua. Meaning, “in the capacity of.” As in, “I’m speaking to you qua computer scientist.” Sounds like a useful Scrabble word to me.

This was used in a really great article by the great, great grandson of Charles Darwin about the recent kerfuffle in Dover over Idiotic Design. It’s good reading; BigChalk’s eLibrary should have it, though you may have to wait a few days. (Your school/public library does subscribe to eLibrary, doesn’t it? Mine does.)