{"id":6223,"date":"2023-01-23T01:53:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T01:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6223"},"modified":"2023-01-23T02:00:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T02:00:29","slug":"word-of-the-day-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2023\/01\/23\/word-of-the-day-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Go"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Old English Wordhord, is go<\/em>. Well, actually, the word on Wordhord today is gangan<\/em>. According to the website, gangan<\/em> means \u201cto go, walk,\u201d and it is pronounced \/\u02c8ga\u014b gan\/. The \/\u014b\/ is a letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound we associate with the \u201cng\u201d of words like sing<\/em> or bring<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you check the etymology on www.etymonline.com<\/a>, it will tell you that go<\/em> comes from the Old English gan<\/em>, \u201c\u2019to advance, walk; depart, go away; happen, take place; conquer; observe, practice, exercise,\u2019 from West Germanic *gaian<\/em> . . . from PIE root *gh\u0113-<\/em> \u2018to release, let go; be released\u2019 (source also of Sanskrit jihite<\/em> \u2018goes away\u2019).\u201d One might wonder if gangan<\/em> is simply a matter of reduplication, which in linguistics is a morphological process whereby a word, or the root of a word, is repeated, sometimes exactly and sometimes with a slight variation. Sometimes we use reduplication grammatically, such as intensifying or making something plural. Think of \u201ceasy peasy\u201d or \u201citsy bitsy.\u201d But gangan<\/em> may not be a simple reduplication since it is a strong verb and gan<\/em> is an irregular verb. I\u2019m guessing that the story is much more interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BTW, go<\/em> is one of only two verbs in English which take their past tense from an entirely different verb. Went<\/em> was originally the past tense and past participle of wend<\/em>, which means \u201cto pursue or direct (one\u2019s way)\u201d or \u201cto proceed or go,\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/wend<\/a>), not much different from go<\/em>. The only use I can think of for wend<\/em> is the expression \u201cto wend one\u2019s way,\u201d and I suspect that that usage has to do with alliteration rather than any specialized meaning (wend<\/em> alliterates with both way<\/em> and one<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1938, Thornton Wilder\u2019s classic play Our Town<\/em> opened at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey. The play, which was called by American playwright Edward Albee \u201cthe greatest American play ever written,\u201d later moved to New York City\u2019s Broadway where it found success, and won for its author a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is also a popular play for college and community theaters. In fact, I directed a production of it at Southern Wesleyan University about 25 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play is metatheatrical, meaning that it is in part about theater, and in that respect it shows us the power of theater to inspire and move an audience. One of the main characters is The Narrator, who not only narrates but also takes on some of the minor roles in the story. Another main character is Emily Webb. In Act 1 we meet her as a young woman. In Act 2, she marries George Gibbs, the third main character. Then, in Act 3\u2026. Well, actually, I\u2019m not going to spoil the play by telling you what happens in Act 3. If you want to know, you\u2019ll have to go to the play the next time someone performs it in your area. Yeah, that\u2019s right! You\u2019ll have to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today is a picture from the original Broadway production of Our Town<\/em>, found here: https:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Theatre\/OurTown<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Old English Wordhord, is go. Well, actually, the word on Wordhord today is gangan. According to the website, gangan means \u201cto go, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6225,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions\/6225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}