Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Word Of The Week

ludique

There are a lot of words in French that I have trouble with. I learn them or have once learned them, then when I hear them again, I realize that I've forgotten what they mean. It takes a while for their meanings to be clear, or for me to know what they mean without thinking about it.

This is one of those words. To me, the sound of this word just doesn't evoke its meaning, so I always get lost when I hear it. I'm hoping that writing about it here will help me to remember better.

It comes from the Latin ludus, meaning game. Something that is ludique is fun, or playful, almost whimsical, like that teapot in the image above. It's that simple.

Now why can't I remember that?

Image from: http://www.zeekgallery.com

4 comments:

  1. I too have English words that won't stick, but writing about them does help! I used to be unable to remember sheepish, and now that I have written about it, it has stuck.
    Claude

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  2. Ludique...what a nice word. We were trying to think of a word to mean "whimsical" in French class the other day and we came up with...actually, I don't remember what we came up with...suffice to say that it was not "ludique." It does help to mull over words in any way possible in order to remember them...one of my friends used to make drawings on paint to illustrate different French verbs and post those to her blog to help them stick :D.

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  3. Maybe it's a bit like the English "ludicrous," but nicer. Anyway, you might make an association.

    Did you shine up those pots before you took the photo in the previous post? Very shiny! My pots don't look like that.

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  4. claude, I agree.

    ranjani, was it capricieux? That's what comes to mind...

    ginny, actually, my research showed that ludicrous does come from the same latin root, so it's a pretty good association.

    Now I don't think I'll ever forget what ludique means!

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