Thursday, March 19, 2009

Quilly's (Hitonious) Three Word Challenge

It's Thursday and Quilly has confronted us with three rare, look-em-up-in-the-dictionary words to write into a story. You can find the meaning of hitonious in last week's challenge. For this week we were confronted with: sternutation; zoilist; anopisthograph



The irate professor ruffled angrily through the dusty old manuscript, growing angrier with each turn of the page. Just because something is old, Martinson, does not make it valuable. This anopisthograph is not the precious masterpiece you seem to think it is. While many of the pages are, I will admit, quite beautiful, the writing, the grammar is.... well it's a crime against the language... against any language. Call me a zoilist if you want, but this whole thing is incoherent dribble. And stop that annoying sternutation. Get a hanky. Take a pill. Take this out of my sight.

Young Martinson stood gazing at the professor in between sneezes with a blank look on his face. Finally he asked in a meek voice. "Professor, do you speak English? I mean I know what you said was English... could you tell me what you said in words I could understand? You seem angry. I got that part."

"Young people today," muttered Professor Mungford. "Your educations are a tetteromous failure. Hitonious!"

"Professor, I still don't understand half of what you're saying," He sneezed miserably. I think I'm allergic to that manuscript. It makes me sneeze."


"I noticed," the professor grumbled. "Your repeated stenternation is very annoying. You must have noticed before that this anopisthograph makes you sneeze...."


"Ok... so stenternation is sneezing?"

"Of course, you ignorant idiot," grumbled the angry educator.


"And an anopisthograph is....???"


"A manuscript or parchment having writing on only one side of the leaves, of course..."

"Of course, professor.... but why did you say I could call you a zoologist?"
"Not zoologist, Martinson, zoilist."

"Oh... uh... what's a zoilist?"

"Ignorance..." muttered the professor. "Zoilus was an noted Greek grammarian and philosopher. He was noted in part for being rather harsh and critical. The term "zoilist" has come to mean 'a rude or nasty critic who gets pleasure finding fault in others.' I get no pleasure at all from it," he smirked, "it's just my curse to be surrounded by fools."

"Ah. A hitonious fate indeed, professor."

"Hitonious, Martinson? Well done. Perhaps there's some hope for you after all. Let's have another look at your manuscript."

The End

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

A funny and totally non-hitonious story. And, sadly, very truthful, American vocabularies get shorter every year.

Anonymous said...

Great use of the words Raven. I really liked this story agree with Quilly about the vocabularies of today's youth

Jientje said...

I love how you have explained the words while telling the story. This 3WT can cause problems for readers outside this challenge it seems, but you have found the right solution!
I absolutely loved your story and the way it was written!

Dianne said...

I too loved how you defined the words as you used them - your illustration is perfect!!

Dr.John said...

Now that was a great use of Quilly's words.
I even felt sorry for that poor boy. Until Quilly I never ran into half of these words.

juliana said...

great. a really clever (or should i say perspicacious) piece of writing, and an entertaining story.

bettygram said...

A great way to write the story so that it can be understood by all.

bettygram said...

I forgot to say I liked the picture.

Carletta said...

Ah, finally, one of these three word stories I can read and understand! :)
Very clever!
I like the photo - it looks very Celtic like.

Ann said...

Nice to meet you. Wonderful blog!

Suster Gila said...

Nice to see your blog

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PsILoveYou said...

Great Blog, I'll Definitely bookmark it!

Alice (in BC Canada) said...

YES!!! An AWESOME story, Raven. I really enjoyed it. What a fabulous idea on telling your readers the meanings of these words Quilly is dusting off for us to use. Very creative.