Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Unleash the word-hoard!



If The Prude told you that a kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution, signifying a person or thing by a characteristic or quality, would you get flesh creeps up and down your back rod?
Oh dear, she meant to say ‘shivers up and down your spine.’
Honestly. Once you get started at kennings, they are a hard habit to break.
Just look at the author of ‘Beowulf’. He used over a 1000. He recounts how Beowulf sailed over the whale-road under the sky candle wearing his mail-shirt to protect his bone-house.
Ahhh. Sheer poetry.
Kennings, my friend, are everywhere. Just allow your thought-abode to open the kenning-door.

The dog didn’t go to the groomer,
the flea-transporter went to the fur-tamer.
The Prude isn’t having her coffee in front of her computer,
she is drinking her snooze-defeater while observing her universe-repository.
(Her husband has other names for the computer:
time-waster, wife-thief, cuss-inducer are the most printable)
It is supposed to rain tonight at The Prude’s. And while rain is many things to many people (heaven’s-beaker, ((technically the rain CLOUD would be heaven’s beaker, but The Prude likes it)) puddle-creator, earth-refresher) tonight, since it will ruin her social activity plan, it is a bonfire-assassinator.

Are you getting excited to toss a few kennings around today? The Prude is just positive that your family will have endless hours of fun figuring them out. (Did mom just tell us to clean our sleep-domains of all the slop-mountains or she would remove all our brain-drainer privileges? That mom–what a kenning-card!)

Maybe The Prude will try to patent a new game. What do you think- Kenning-opoly? Kennings to Kennings? Chutes and Kennings? Or Kenning Pursuit?

Please come back next ‘Readin’, ‘wRitin’, ‘Rithmetic and histoRy Wednesday' when we talk about spurting blood and guts in Beowulf.

5 comments:

Lori Lipsky said...

I'm always learning here. Always learning!

It's Grimnir's lip-streams to me (had to look that up).

Esther Dean :P said...

Hahaha, your hubby, what a poet!

Susan said...

Love, love, love Beowulf, but Jake and I have moved on to Macbeth. Blood and guts literature for boys!

Suef said...

I love this. It could be the next party game rage and I know just where to use it.

Robin Steinweg said...

Blood and guts I don't miss (or should we say life-liquid and inward-gears?). But I ken a new game is a wonderful time-put-offer and a noodle-tank cerebral exerciser. I vote for Kenningopoly or Kenning Pursuit. Or maybe Kenningravation, Kenning Trap, KenningRisk, Kenning-a-taire, Kenscrabbleing, Husker-Kenning, BattleKenning, KenningLand, ScatterKenningory, Kenningyahtz, or even VolleyKenning. Oh dear, I can't stop! It's addictkenning!
Prude, we shall see what my husband's opinion is of you after he endures a nine-hour ride in the wheel-box with me tomorrow.