Wednesday, February 20, 2008

licked, apocope, halos

A man with two alsation puppies on leads stops to do up a shoe lace. But the dogs won't let him. They assault him with paws and tongues, licking him as though his face was made of sugar, clearly impressed to find him at their level.

On a blackboard announcing the menu of the cafe in Calverley Park, after sandwiches, cakes and the like, "jackets". Jacket potatoes, of course. In the same way greengrocers sometimes shorten tomatoes to "toms"., and cucumbers to "cues" . Apacopes. I thought the word would come in useful.

The morning sun highlights the heads of people in the street, where I wait for Heidi outside the post office. It touches dark hair and fair, and edges white hair with silver. It gilds the tops of heads, bald and hatted, and gleams even on the hard hat of passing building workers. Saints everyone, they seem, and walk past ignorant of their short lived grace.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A particularly satisfying threesome.

Lucy said...

Once you start noticing apocopes you see them everywhere...

Rashmi said...

'Apacopes'... what a lovely word! And when I googled it, 'Now's the time' is the only link I got! What does it mean?

Anonymous said...

From the Greek, it means the ommission of a letter or letters from the end of a word, as in the word "laboratory" shortened to "lab". Hence "toms" from tomatoes etc. I didn't mean to monopolise it, Rashmi.