by Siddiq Islam REALISM – late 18th century: from real + -ism, after German Realismus Realism is humans’ attempt at capturing the world around them in a ‘realistic’ way. The word applies itself in many contexts, from the art world, where painters try to depict natural objects as accurately as possible rather than the more symbolic […]
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by Jerric Chong ORIGIN – early 16th century: from French origine, from Latin origo, origin-, from oriri ‘to rise’. [Oxford Languages] So here you are at last, donning your sub fusc and gown and traipsing up the steps of the Sheldonian with hundreds of others to hear some unintelligible Latin muttered at you, before filing out into […]
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by Monim Wains Hence, the future beckons, as it always does. With the last issue of this academic year, you move on, dear reader, turning a new page. But, I wonder, how big will the change be? Is the summer just a page break? Or a whole new chapter of life? Although the university seems […]
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by Jerric Chong Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is: brethren, to dwell together in unity! Psalm 113:1 As I write this, Sam Ryder has just given the UK our best result in twenty years at the Eurovision Song Contest: a goodly 466 points to finish in second place. The victorious act (most […]
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by Jerric Chong A very happy New Year, and welcome back from all us at The Poor Print as we embark on Hilary 2022! ‘Joy’, like so many other utterances in this language of ours, arrived with the conquering Normans, and derives ultimately from Latin gaudium through French joie (also meaning ‘jewel’), which then became […]
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by Monim Wains What sets magic apart – what makes something magical – is the surprise, I would suggest. It is the revelation of something hidden and unexpected, without any explanation for why it is so. And our reaction, good or bad, depends on what we know, and where the magic remains. When we are […]
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by Monim Wains What is life but a string of fibres tied from you to some stranger, perhaps momentarily intertwined? What is life but the tangling of those threads into the tapestry of your memories? Were we not all strangers to this world on the day when we were born? From that day on, we […]
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by Michael Angerer The end of the academic year is upon us, vacation-time is about to break out, and so it is time to look back fondly upon our term as Executive Editors of The Poor Print: it is time for nostalgia. You might think that the word ‘nostalgia’ has ancient roots; you would be wrong. […]
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by Michael Angerer The need to identify the essential being of all things, the underlying truth hidden behind superficial appearances, seems to be an irresistible impulse; it is in any case certain that the concept of a soul, or a psyche, is among the oldest known to humanity, and among the most widespread. And yet, […]
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by Michael Angerer Modernity is the central tenet of our age, which likes to classify itself as ‘post-modern’, ‘post-colonial’, and ‘post-truth’; we tend to look upon tradition as stuffy, out-dated, and generally irrelevant to what our everyday lives should be. As you might have guessed from the presence of this column, however, there is far […]
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by Michael Angerer It is somewhat surprising – and then, perhaps not – that the word ‘revolution’ is in itself quite unconventional: it was adopted partly from French and partly from Latin (as the Oxford English Dictionary reliably informs us) and can ultimately be traced back to the Latin revolvere, meaning ‘to revolve’; and, indeed, […]
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by Michael Angerer This, dear readers, would usually be the place to share with you some etymological musings on the word ‘spark’. Usually, we might inform you that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it rather unremarkably derives from Old English spearca, meaning ‘a small particle of fire’; and that, more interestingly, it eventually also […]
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by Michael Angerer The beauty of Fantasy – and, in part, the reason why it was chosen as this issue’s theme – is both how varied its meanings can be and how close they ultimately are to the etymological root of the word. A quick glance at the Oxford English Dictionary, preferably in its handy […]
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