Today’s topic brought to you by: 300 Writing Prompts.
My son and his girlfriend teamed up and their brainstorming led to this book as one of my Christmas gifts. It contains three hundred ideas to set me (and you) thinking. I flipped through it this morning.
I passed by “What color do you feel like today?” (Blue, but in the good way. Not much more to say about that.)
I turned the page quickly from “How clean is your house now?” Not going there.
I landed on “What is something you learned in the past few days?”
I thought back to the scrap of paper left lying about on one of the desks at one of the places where I work. (I have too many jobs, really.) Someone had written the word OBSTREPEROUS in well-spaced capital letters. I picked the paper up. “What’s this about?” I asked.
A co-worker, whose first language is not English, said, “What does it mean?”
I thought about this. I had heard the word before and I could take a stab at a definition, but when it came right down to it I had to confess that I wasn’t sure. “I think it means grumpy,” I said. “I’ll look it up.”
I searched Oxford Dictionaries and came up with: “Noisy and difficult to control.”
“Ah,” I said. “I understand how I was confused. People who are obstreperous make other people grumpy.”
Why was OBSTREPEROUS lying around on the work station? I would tell you, but thinking about it makes me a little grumpy.
What have you learned in the past few days?
I think it very sad (for me at least) how many things lead my mind to our current political state – obstreperous took me there straight-away. Not pointing fingers or anything. ..
Ha! You know, I hadn’t even thought of that when I was writing this, but it does apply . . .
OBSTREPEROUS — I just learned something too! 🙂
Great word, right? Expanding our vocabularies one word at a time.
I have a whole blog post about obstreperous! It’s here: https://turtlehead.me/2016/07/21/obstreperous/
I had never heard of it before reading it in a Nancy Drew book to my daughter a couple of years ago. It was so surprising to me to run into a word that I had never, ever heard, let alone in a book meant for kids. So of course I had to look it up. Thanks for the reminder!
I’m part of the campaign with you. It’s a great word!
Forgot to mention – I also have that exact same writing prompts book and yet have done nothing with it. The best laid plans, yadda, yadda. Someday!
🙂 I think I want that book of prompts! When I read the word obstreperous, I immediately thought “stubborn.” And I’ve probably used the word that way once in awhile. So now I know better! What have I learned the past few days? A good friendship may flicker, but it will never fade away…. ❤
I guess being noisy and difficult to control involves a little bit of stubborn. And I love what you learned. What a wonderful thing.