Re: Virginia Woolf died (28-3-1941)

On 3/29/2024 7:41 PM, HenHanna wrote:

She may have been talking about Joyce's Ulysses, which contained
               some  new invented words,  like   [snotgreen sea]   
------- or Joyce's FW


           Joyce's  Ulysses   killed (eclipsed)   her great novel.



James Joyce was famous for his wordplay and invention of new words in
Ulysses. Here are some examples:

Coinages:  These are entirely new words not found in any dictionary
before Ulysses. Some examples include:

Ripripple: Describes something flowing like rippling water.
Bullockbefriending: A playful term for someone friendly with animals.
Snotshotten: A rather unpleasant word for someone with a runny nose.
Tattarrattat: An onomatopoeic word for a knocking sound.
Portmanteaus:  These are words created by blending two existing words.
Some examples include:

Homesweethome: A combination of "home" and "sweet home."
Greensleeves: Possibly a combination of "green" and "sleeves."
Afterhours: A combination of "after" and "hours." (Though this might
seem common today, it was new at the time)
Neologisms:  These are new words formed from existing morphemes
(meaningful units of words). Some examples include:

Unlove: The opposite of love.
Onlookerish: Behaving like an onlooker.
Nightnoiseful: Full of night noises.

You're saying that "Greensleeves" did not appear in a dictionary until
after Joyce used it? That may be but the term has been around for
centuries according to folk song collectors, performers, and scholars
that I have met over the years. In the 1950s, I was told that the song
Greensleeves, was rather misunderstood*. It seems that, way back when,
prostitutes in England did not bother to rent a room by the hour;
Rather, they would just flip up there dress or skirt or whatever and lay
back on the village green. After a short time there sleeves would be
grass stained and that led to "Greensleeves" often meaning a prostitute.

If you keep this interpretation in mind the next time you hear that song
song, you will probably change its category from love song to drinking song.

* In the 1950s I hung out with some other high school kids who were
interested in folk music and many played appropriate instruments. We
were about fifty miles from Indiana University at Bloomington. Once a
month (plus or minus a week or two) we would invite a grade student
doing a dissertation in folk music (they had some sort of folk
anthropology department or academic group) to join us and tell us about
their work and to play some of the music they had collected. The
"Greensleeves interpretation" was learned through them. There were other
interesting stories about old music but in the intervening years I have
forgotten virtually all of them.
--
Jeff Barnett