Author: Niall O'Donnell

Happy Thanksgiving!

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! The commemoration of the first Thanksgiving feast between the Wampanoag tribe and the Mayflower pilgrims is obviously an integral part of American culture. And yet, as it’s not celebrated anywhere in Europe, I was always curious about the celebration whenever I was watching an episode of a TV episode set on the holiday. What are they celebrating? Why is it so close to Christmas? Won’t they get sick of having two big turkey dinners in such close proximity?

As I got older and more worldly, I gathered more information and began to understand the origins of the holiday. I began to understand why Americans refer to The Holidays, plural, and I no longer think Thanksgiving is too close to Christmas. It’s actually a nice way to break up the monotony of Autumn/Winter. Though the commemoration of a peaceful feast between pilgrims and Native Americans always seemed strangely melancholy to me, given how things turned out.

Interestingly enough, that wasn’t actually the first Thanksgiving. Continue reading →

A Hard Day’s Night Never Knows

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

A malapropism is a speech error in which a word in a phrase is accidentally replaced by one with a similar sound, usually with comic effect. The term Dogberryism is also sometimes used, after the character in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing,” who was quite prone to making them…

Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons (Act III, Scene V)

They’re often used in fiction as a comedic device, but are quite common in real life too. Some notable examples: Continue reading →

I’m Going to the Bank

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

Which one?

Huh?

Which bank?

I don’t know, does it matter?

Not really, but why did you say the bank if it doesn’t matter?

I don’t know, that’s just what we say.

Have you ever found yourself saying that you’re going to go to a bank? Of course not, that’d be weird, wouldn’t it? But if you think about it, it doesn’t make sense if you’re from a large town or city. When we say the bank, it sounds like we’re referring to a single, specific bank that the listener knows. Now this is fine if you’re in a smallish town with only one bank. But if you live somewhere with more than one bank it sounds strange to say the bank, as though there were only one bank. We do the same with other phrases like… Continue reading →

I Guess That’s Why They Call it The Blues

Niall O'Donnell 11 Comments

Why do we associate the colour blue with sadness and depression? You can feel blue, have or sing the blues. The third Monday of January is known as Blue Monday and is claimed to be statistically the saddest day of the year, though the study which first this has been debunked as pseudoscience. What can’t be argued, however, is that it’s also the name of a great New Order song:

Most people suggest we think of blue in this way because it’s calming, and that this effect is psychological, being derived from our association of the colour with the passivity of the sky or the hypnotic rhythms of the sea. And even though depression isn’t always passive or sad, it’s heavily associated with sadness, and we do imagine sadness as being a passive, stagnant state. Continue reading →

Surnames

Niall O'Donnell 25 Comments

Have you ever thought about your surname? Do you know where it comes from, what it means? Many English-language surnames are derived from jobs: Continue reading →

Late-Night Thought: Words you Read but Never Say

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

We all have a store of words that we come across again and again as we read, but we never actually hear spoken. So we then either:

a)  have a moment of surprise when we hear it for the first time…

b) hear it spoken aloud, but never associate that sound with its spelling, thinking of them as two separate words (this was the case for me with the word epitome for a long time), or…

c) we go our whole lives never hearing them.

Here are some of the most common words people have this struggle with: Continue reading →

You’ve Made it: You’re an Adjective!

Niall O'Donnell 11 Comments

Orwellian has become the go-to adjective to describe any situation of seemingly heavy-handed government surveillance or intervention. In a way it’s kind of a compliment, that you produced a work so evocative, so incisive that it comes to be seen as an ideal summation of a specific notion. A part of me also thinks that it’s a shame that those things we usually describe as Orwellian are really only relevant to Nineteen Eighty-Four, and not Orwell’s quite varied body of work.

Kafkaesque is another literary proper adjective (an adjective derived from a proper noun), which is more fitting, as much of Franz Kafka’s work has that sense of an individual dwarfed and alone in a world of uncaring, overwhelming bureaucracy that the adjective describes. If you’re a psychologist you might describe yourself as a Freudian or a Jungian. Much has recently been made of Donald Trump’s Keynesian economic policies. Continue reading →