{"id":21625,"date":"2021-11-10T13:42:01","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T13:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21625"},"modified":"2021-11-10T13:42:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T13:42:03","slug":"misdirection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21625","title":{"rendered":"Misdirection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The words <strong>forward<\/strong>, <strong>backward<\/strong>, <strong>eastward<\/strong> and <strong>westward<\/strong> all share the suffix <strong>-ward<\/strong>, which indicates a course or direction to, or motion or tendency toward.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/awkward.jpg\" style=\"text-align:center;\" alt=\"A word cloud using words from this post\" width=\"630\" height=\"340\"><br \/>\n<em>Word cloud created with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freewordcloudgenerator.com\/generatewordcloud\">Free World Cloud Generator<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>-ward<\/strong> comes from the Old English <em>-weard<\/em> (in the direction of, toward), from Proto-Germanic <em>*wardaz<\/em>, from <em>*war\u00feaz<\/em> (turned toward, in the direction of, facing), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*wert-<\/em> (to turn, wind) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/-weard#Old_English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Other directional words the feature this suffix include: <strong>inward<\/strong>, <strong>outward<\/strong>, <strong>northward<\/strong>, <strong>southward<\/strong>, <strong>leftward<\/strong>, <strong>rightward<\/strong>, <strong>homeward<\/strong>, <strong>seaward<\/strong>, <strong>landward<\/strong> and <strong>awkward<\/strong> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-ward\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Awkward<\/strong>?? What direction is that?<\/p>\n<p>Awkward means:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lacking dexterity in the use of the hands, or of instruments.<\/li>\n<li>Not easily managed or effected; embarrassing.<\/li>\n<li>Lacking social skills, or uncomfortable with social interaction.<\/li>\n<li>Perverse; adverse; difficult to handle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Originally it meant \u201cin a backwards direction\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/awkward#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Awk<\/strong> is an obsolete word that means:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Odd, out of order, perverse.<\/li>\n<li>Wrong, not commonly used, clumsy, sinister.<\/li>\n<li>Clumsy in performance or manners; not dexterous.<\/li>\n<li>Uncomfortable, awkward.<\/li>\n<li>Perversely; in the wrong way<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Awk<\/strong> comes from the Old Norse <em>\u01ebfugr<\/em> (turned backwards), from the Proto-Germanic <em>*abuhaz<\/em> (turned the wrong way, inverted; wicked, bad) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/awk#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Words from the same root include <strong>\u00f6fugur<\/strong> (reversed, inverted, backwards, wrong) in Icelandic, and <strong>\u00e4bich<\/strong> (inside out) in German [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic\/abuhaz\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>So being <strong>awkward<\/strong> means you\u2019re going backwards or heading in the wrong direction. That\u2019s fine with me &#8211; I am a bit awkward sometimes, particularly in social interactions and situations, or you could say that I just go in my own direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The words forward, backward, eastward and westward all share the suffix -ward, which indicates a course or direction to, or motion or tendency toward. Word cloud created with Free World Cloud Generator -ward comes from the Old English -weard (in the direction of, toward), from Proto-Germanic *wardaz, from *war\u00feaz (turned toward, in the direction of, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625","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=21625"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21631,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions\/21631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}