The word genuflection just popped into my head, as I looked at the reflection in this railroad track in Rose Canyon.
I've known the verb "genuflect" for (almost) as long as I can remember (I still have a few memories from my pre-awareness-of-the-verb-"to genuflect"-days). I've never thought about what the word means.
Functionally, I know that it meant that whenever you came into church, or left, or went past the part of a catholic church where god was supposed to be hanging out, you were supposed to "genuflect." But I never thought about what the word itself actually meant. And just now I spontaneously came up with a guess. I just thought it should mean "genuine reflection."
and so I googled it and found the following on Wikipedia:
Genuflection (or genuflexion) (Latin genuflexio "bending of the knee")
So it's knee bending pose. there is nothing in the name that suggestion genuine. The "genu" part refers to knee, not pure intentions.
That's cool.
Maybe tomorrow in class, I'll ask my students to genuflect (bend their knees) and then gen-you-flect (honestly reflect on something important to them).
I can add that to the list of words we've "taken back." Now stop reading my fag blog!!!
2 commenti:
did you take that picture? how come the cloud looks like a hand reaching down from the sky? did you photoshop it?
Hi Heather! Yup, I took the picture. No photoshopping...just a wacky reflection on a piece o' metal.
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