'Wax eloquent' was the first of this group of phrases to be used to describe someone becoming increasingly expansive and expressive in speech. Of these, it is 'wax poetic' that is still most commonly used. This occurs in various phrases, like 'wax lyrical', 'wax poetic' and 'wax eloquent'. It isn't until much later that 'wax' began to be used to refer to flowery and poetic speech or writing. "But he that shulde haue bene vpright, when he waxed fat, spurned with his hele." There are numerous examples of the use of 'wax', meaning 'grow', in medieval texts for example, The Geneva Bible, 1560, in Deuteronomy 32:15: King Alfred, in the translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, which he commissioned in AD 897, used the Old English version of the word - 'weaxan'. In fact, the word is extremely ancient and was used to mean grow in many contexts prior to it being used to describe the monthly increase in size of the visible moon. These are often explained as deriving from the imagery of the waxing of the moon. The other remaining contemporary uses of 'wax' with the meaning of 'grow', survive in various expressions like 'wax poetic' and 'wax lyrical'. Grow and decrease have largely superseded the archaic terms wax and wane in almost all modern usages, apart from the waxing and waning of the moon. The verb 'to wax' is 'to grow' the opposite of 'to wane', which is 'to decrease'. 'Waxing poetic' has nothing to do with bees, candles, or polishing cars. What's the origin of the phrase 'Wax lyrical'? To wax poetic is to speak in an increasingly enthusiastic and poetic manner.
Tweet us or e-mail MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Post a recollection of your favorite block to our Facebook page. GREENE: Poetry month is just getting started and so are we. Thanks to all the poetic language we received at MORNING EDITION's Facebook page. MARYLU LEE: I remember sultry Alabama days and nights, waking up in an old iron bed with crisp white sheets dried in the sunshine spending evenings listening to the old Southern stories from my rarely seen relatives, while rocking in the old chairs or swinging on the porch swing. She even got a little misty talking about it. GREENE: From Mary Lou Lee, the block that had everything was on Seventh Avenue in Tuscaloosa where grandparents lived. The white house, the side yard, the inviting parents, the cool basement, the little brother who did what ever we told him to, it had everything. To all of us street rat kids it was our home. To an outsider, it may have seen like nothing more than the house on the corner where the street rat kids hung out. When his friends said the corner, they all knew which one.ĪARON STUVIE: We congregated there. INSKEEP: Writer Aaron Stuvie told us about the block where he grew up in Davenport, Iowa, especially a particular corner. Others recalled riding a bike in the Bronx or visiting an old haunted mansion in Santiago, Chile. That's just one of the descriptions we received about people's favorite blocks. GREENE: I kind of want to go there right now. Even the Spanish word for block, manzana or apple, is poetic. GREENE: Here's why Kelly Conroy, now at Western Kentucky University, remembers that block in Barcelona.ĬONROY: I loved the sycamores, the unique sidewalk paving tiles and the shape of the blocks themselves - octagons, and the mix of Spanish and Catalan and other languages. KELLY CONROY: My favorite block is the one I lived on land I was 20 years old, studying abroad in Barcelona. We wanted to hear about your favorite block, whether it's where you live or somewhere you just stopped by once and never forgot. We asked people to go to our Facebook page, not to write poems exactly, but to wax poetic. Now April is national poetry month and we wanted to hear from the poets among you, our listeners.
0 kommentar(er)
