Tuesday, January 03, 2006

amy loves books: "trifling"

Her students use the word "trifling" to insult each other, an oddly Jane Austen-esque word in a rough urban environment. They attach their own meaning to it:

...the girls use trifling to describe someone who gets upset or makes a big deal over small things. A grudge-holder. A conflict-igniter. A trifling person.

I've never used the word trifling, but I have used trifle. The dictionary defines a trifle as "something of little or insignificant value". Silly. Trite.

When a student at her school got shot a couple of weeks ago, and the word was he might be paralyzed for life, it stopped the blogger at "amy loves books" in her tracks. She couldn't write for a while, she says, because everything else felt to her like it would be trifling, in the dictionary sense. Ouch.

She has her feet back under her and is posting again. But ouch.

hat tip: The "Favorite Blogs" link list at Writing and Living.

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