{"id":6823,"date":"2024-05-30T02:28:20","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T02:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6823"},"modified":"2024-05-30T02:30:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T02:30:05","slug":"word-of-the-day-obstreperous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/05\/30\/word-of-the-day-obstreperous\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Obstreperous"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is obstreperous<\/em>. It\u2019s an adjective that means \u201cresisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly<\/a>\u201d or \u201cnoisy, clamorous, or boisterous\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/obstreperous<\/a>). M-W says, \u201cObstreperous<\/em> is a formal word that describes people or things that stubbornly resist control; in this use it\u2019s a synonym of unruly<\/em><\/a>. A person or thing described as obstreperous<\/em> may also be defiantly or aggressively noisy\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/word-of-the-day<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M-W explains, \u201cImagine walking a dog down a sidewalk in a neighborhood full of delicious smells and other temptations\u2014it\u2019s easy to picture your pooch barking and straining at the leash to chase a squirrel, or dragging you toward something enticingly (to them) stinky, right? But can you imagine saying to your doggo<\/a> in response, \u201cQuit being so obstreperous!\u201d Probably not. Obstreperous<\/em> has a much more formal flair than words, such as stubborn<\/em> or unruly<\/em>, used to describe similar behavior. As such it\u2019s unlikely to be used in casual speech or contexts like the one above. The word comes from a combination of the handy Latin prefix ob-<\/em> (meaning \u2018against\u2019) and strepere<\/em>, a verb meaning \u2018to make a noise\u2019; someone who is obstreperous can be thought of as literally making noise to rebel against something, much like a protesting crowd or an unruly child. Strepere<\/em> has made little noise in the English lexicon, however; in addition to obstreperous<\/em> it seems only to have contributed to the rarely encountered strepitous<\/em><\/a> and its synonym strepitant<\/em>, which mean \u2018characterized or accompanied by much noise\u2019\u2014that is, \u2018noisy\u2019\u201d (ibid.). Now, I have never heard of the words strepitous<\/em> or strepitant<\/em> in my life, so perhaps it has made even less noise than M-W suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word entered the English language \u201cc. 1600, from Latin obstreperous \u2018<\/em>clamorous,\u2019 from obstrepere \u2018<\/em>drown with noise, make a noise against, oppose noisily,\u2019 from ob \u2018<\/em>against\u2019 (see ob-<\/strong><\/a>) + strepere \u2018<\/em>make a noise,\u2019 from PIE *strep-<\/em>, said to be imitative (compare Latin stertare \u2018<\/em>to snore,\u2019 Old Norse \u00ferefa \u2018<\/em>to quarrel,\u2019 \u00ferapt  \u2018<\/em>chattering, gossip,\u2019 Old English \u00fer\u00e6ft \u2018<\/em>quarrel\u2019). But de Vaan writes, \u2018It is uncertain that *strep- <\/em>goes back to PIE, since it is only found in Latin and Germanic.\u2019 Extended sense of \u2018resisting control, management, or advice\u2019 is by 1650s\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=+obstreperous<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, the \u00fe<\/em> in those Germanic words is a letter called thorn. \u201cThe letter originated from the rune<\/a> \u16a6<\/a> in the Elder Fu\u00feark<\/a> and was called thorn<\/em> in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn<\/em> or thurs<\/a><\/em> in the Scandinavian rune poems<\/a>. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (\u03f8)<\/a>, although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which \u00fe is currently in use is Icelandic<\/a>. It is pronounced as either a voiceless dental fricative<\/a> [\u03b8] or its voiced counterpart<\/a> [\u00f0]\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thorn_(letter)<\/a>). In other words, it can be pronounced like the th<\/em> in thin<\/em> or the th<\/em> in then<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve taken up pickleball. I would blame it on retirement, but I actually took it up before I retired. For years, when I was playing racquetball several times per week, I thought that pickleball was this sport for people who were no longer physically capable of playing other sports. But then we did a family vacation at the Club Med in Florida (the one that has since closed down), and they offered pickleball lessons. Figuring that I needed the exercise, and lacking any other options, I gave it a try. I liked it. At the end of the week, they held a pickleball tournament, and I won. Of course, I was the only entry. It was mid-September, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickleball was invented in 1965, making it much older than I thought it was. Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum, and Bill Bell are given credit for inventing the game, though I think their kids deserve a little of the credit. The story is that Pritchard and Bell came back to Pritchard\u2019s summer home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, from playing golf, and found their kids sitting around bored. They set up a court for badminton, but they couldn\u2019t find the birdie. So they set about figuring out what game they could invent. So they tried using ping pong paddles, lowering the net, and using different balls, like wiffle balls (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pickleball#).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say that they eventually worked out the rules\u2014larger paddles, thicker balls (and different for indoor and outdoor play), the non-volley zone, etc. But they are actually still fine tuning the rules even after all these years. Still, the game is well developed at this point, including massively growing numbers of players and courts as well as an increasingly present professional game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to play in different venues. This morning I played at the Brevard Health and Racquet Club. We were visiting my 96-year-old mother-in-law in Brevard. Tomorrow I\u2019ll play at the Anderson Civic Center. Friday morning I hope to play in Bluffton, where my oldest lives. It\u2019s fun to meet and play with and against different people. My son and my son-in-law have both taken up the game. It\u2019s something that people of any age can play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one thing that is problematic about pickleball is the noise. The plastic ball makes a significant pop when struck by a wooden or carbon-fiber paddle. Some companies are now marketing paddles that are supposed to be quieter, and some companies have recently been trying to market sponge rubber balls, but nobody I know wants to play with them. I have heard of some neighborhoods that have actually filed suit against their POA because they object to the noise of pickleball. However, the noise doesn\u2019t bother me. I don\u2019t find it obstreperous at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is a large group of friends playing pickleball at my former employer, Southern Wesleyan University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is obstreperous. It\u2019s an adjective that means \u201cresisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly\u201d or \u201cnoisy, clamorous, or boisterous\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/obstreperous). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,284,719,720],"class_list":["post-6823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-obstreperous","tag-pickleball","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","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=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6825,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions\/6825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}