Amuse-bouche:

Don’t drive recklessly. Drive wrecklessly.

Today’s Wonderful Words: “Janus word.”

Definition: a word that has opposite or nearly opposite meanings.

Etymology: Janus is the literally two-faced Roman god of beginnings, doorways, and the movement of the sun. The name Janus is also the source of January (Latin Jānuārius) and related to jānus, “doorway, covered passage,” as in janitor. Janus words go by many alternative names, such as the Latin–Greek blend “contranym” or the purely Greek “auto-antonym.” Janus word was first recorded in English in the late 1930s, predating its alternatives.

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Isn’t it crazy that there’s a word to describe how we use words to describe other words?? Metalanguage is a form of language or set of terms used for the description or analysis of another language.

Metalanguage is used to compare a native language with an object (or target) language. In short, it involves using words to describe other words, such as “noun” and “verb” and “clause” and “quotation marks.” Very meta, right?

Perhaps Patrick Rothfuss said it best in The Name of the Wind: “Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating … but there are other ways to understanding.”

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Answer to Saturday’s riddle:

She was born in hospital room number 2004.

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