{"id":15948,"date":"2018-08-08T12:03:29","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T11:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=15948"},"modified":"2018-08-08T12:03:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T11:03:29","slug":"wonky-strawberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=15948","title":{"rendered":"Wonky Strawberries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wonky<\/p>\n

Yesterday I bought some ‘naturally wonky strawberries<\/strong>‘ at the supermarket. They were cheaper than the non-wonky strawberries, and do not meet the same aesthetic standards, but taste just as good. Normally such imperfect fruit would be thrown away, so selling them reduces food waste. Also I like the word wonky, and thought I’d find out more about where it comes from.<\/p>\n

Wonky<\/strong> means lopsided, misaligned, off-centre; feeble, shaky, rickety; generally incorrect. It can also refer to “A subgenre of electronic music employing unstable rhythms, complex time signatures, and mid-range synths”.<\/p>\n

It comes from the Middle English wankel<\/em> (unstable, shaky), from the Old English wancol<\/em> (unstable), from the Proto-Germanic *wankulaz<\/em> (swaying, shaky, unstable), from the Proto-Germanic *wank\u014dn\u0105<\/em> (to sway, be unsteady), from Proto-Indo-European *wa(n)k-, *wek-, *wag-, *weg-<\/em> (to swing, be unsteady, slant, be crooked) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Wonky is also the nickname of the main character in Jasper Fforde’s new novel, Early Riser<\/em><\/a>, which I just finished reading, and really enjoyed. It includes made-up words and word play, so is linguistically interesting, and I’d thoroughly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I bought some ‘naturally wonky strawberries‘ at the supermarket. They were cheaper than the non-wonky strawberries, and do not meet the same aesthetic standards, but taste just as good. Normally such imperfect fruit would be thrown away, so selling them reduces food waste. Also I like the word wonky, and thought I’d find out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}