Literature Word of the Week – Literature

26 Weeks to a better Understanding of Literature

I’m aiming to improve my knowledge around all things literature and to help me do this I thought I’d start by learning a new literary word every week.  A-Z, although knowing me it might not be in any alphabetic order.  I might treat this more like a list on random shuffle.

So, I find a word and look out the following for it:

• How does it sound?
• What does it mean?
• Who invented it (if known)
• When did the word come about?
• Example to be used in a sentence (preferable in spoken form).

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Week 1:

Literature

It seemed an obvious place to start really.  It’s that word I can’t seem to type without spelling it incorrectly.  So I hope if nothing else this week it’s constant type on the post will finally get me to spell it well.

I thought the best place to start would be in the Oxford Companion to Literature.  However the word literature is not listed…hmmm

It’s not even that easy to say lit..era…ture…you can feel your tongue moving around your mouth as you say the word, like it’s gone for a walk over the fells.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary states the following.

noun

literary production; realm of letters, writings of country or period; writings whose value lies in beauty of form or emotional effect; the books etc. treating of a subject.

Online Etymology states that the word is:

late 14c., from Latin literatura/litteratura

I do like the meaning of the word.  It sums up for me everything that the written word is – beauty, emotion and gives effect to the one that is reading it.

I always assumed literature meant only fictional works but the definition suggests it is everything in written format.  So I have already learnt something new, excellent 🙂

This weeks word will be dead easy to get into a given sentence.  Something like…I’m just popping to the library to pick up some new literature…oh or what about…My dear, that literature I’ve been reading is such a drag…

I just need my smoking jacket now 😉

By the way – the word literature is worth 10 points in scrabble.

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