Am I a Word Nerd??

 

Yesterday (9th January 2025) was supposedly "National Word Nerd Day". Not sure if it was something celebrated in America rather than here in the UK, but it got me very intrigued. I started to ponder.....what makes somebody a Word Nerd? And do I qualify?

I am naturally interested in words. My love of books have led me to enhance my vocabulary just by reading and looking up words I do not understand. This is a huge part of my work too. I work with a brilliant teacher who is a great believer that encouraging the children to read will make them better at spelling and improve the depth of their writing, and I whole heartedly agree! 

This week, I have been enjoying adding words to our "word wall" in class, encouraging the children to find words they do not understand within the texts they are reading and together we find out what they mean, adding them to the wall so that they can act as prompts for them to use them in their own writing.

It isn't just the children who have used the words either! I became very interested in the word "Marginalia" back at the start of term which was in one of the texts they were reading. We found out what it meant in the book (the marks made in the margins of a book and first was found in Medieval times!) and I became inspired, writing a poem about it! I would love to share it, but I am unsure how I can type it up as it is written all around a margin!!! Will look into that one!

My interest in words has also been piqued this week during a French lesson this week! The children were looking at the French words for weather and it happened to be sleeting at the time. We decided to look up the word for sleet and found out it is "Neige Fondue". Well......straight away I was wondering what fondue had to do with sleet!! So, I investigated further and found that fondue comes from the French "to melt"!! 

Sometimes, I see myself as a Word Collector or enthusiast rather than a "Nerd". Only because I am not inept in knowing where all words derive from or when they first appeared in the English Dictionary, but I do like to know interesting words and what they mean. I am hoping very soon to expand on this in my workplace with a little project (if I actually remember to bring the resources home to start it!!) I will be sharing this in the future!

Anyway, to all those Word Nerds out there, I hope you enjoyed your unofficial day of recognition!!

(PS I know the words in the image do not make sense......I did use AI for the image!!)