This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Tuesday 22 November 2011

Thing To Do Today: twinkle.

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what
All that twinkling is all about.

We'd see a star as a steady point of light, without all the romantic wobbling and blinking and colour-changing, if we didn't have all this air all over the place.

As you may have noticed, air's runny stuff. It's always being blown about, and when the light from a star gets bashed about by air currents it gets bent into a collection of very tiny rainbows, which we see as twinkling.

Now, I realise that you personally are unlikely to be able to exude rainbows, even fleetingly; but if you look at someone with affection then your eyes may well go twinkly.

Jewel-studded false eyelashes will help if you're having a hate-everybody day.

Or perhaps you could persuade your toes to twinkle, which in this case means to move lightly and delicately and very fast.

The great thing about twinkling is that you only have to do it for a... well, for a twinkling, which is the blink of an eye.

If you're in New Zealand, and you're feeling slow and you happen to hate everyone, then you can always twink out something, which means to delete it with correction fluid.

But still, do see if you can manage to be a bit of a star.

Thing To Do Today: twinkle. This word is from the Old English word twinclian, and is related to the Middle High German zwinken, to blink.

1 comment:

  1. And if we feel the opposite of twinkly, we could maybe TWUNKLE! Or even TWANKLE. Wonderful what a change in vowels can achieve. Shame those aren't real word, isn't it? Or maybe they are...Word Den would know. I kind of hope at least one of those exists.

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