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"I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hy
by kordlessagain 7y ago
"I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the
pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the
verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen
event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday
afternoon, of how the Lungarno used to look before the bridges were destroyed, of the Bayswater
Road when the only buses were green and tiny and drawn by aged horses at three and a half miles an
hour. But such images have little substance and absolutely no autonomous life of their own. They stand
to real, perceived objects in the same relation as Homer's ghosts stood to the men of flesh and blood,
who came to visit them in the shades. Only when I have a high temperature do my mental images come
to independent life. To those in whom the faculty of visualization is strong my inner world must seem
curiously drab, limited and uninteresting. This was the world - a poor thing but my own - which I
expected to see transformed into something completely unlike itself"
- cmuldur 7y agoI couldn't comprehend the meaning of "pregnant words of poets". Can someone explain this to a non-native english speaker?
- julian37 7y agoA dictionary will help, or try googling for "pregnant definition": 2. full of meaning; significant or suggestive. "a pregnant pause" EDIT: Or you're a recursive troll?
- cmuldur 7y agoNo man i just tried to search pregnant words of poets and found lots of poems about pregnancy which i liked some of them. I don't advise you to read though.
- idclip 7y agoYour confusion is endearing it makes me smile with compassion. Bless you. The word pregnant is used symbolically - a woman carries a child with great effort (the symbology gets even more significant if we consider the act of sex before the pregnancy) - and the child Is born with great pain, but eventually happiness of the parents. So this symbol of promise-of-joy-at-end-of-suffering, when combined with the symbol of the word (as carrier of meaning) gives birth (see how im using birth here to explain something? Its a similar mechanism) to a new symbol, “pregnant words” - these words written during great emotional storms, and attempt to draw a picture of immense meaning and beauty to those who read it, if they are also in the right state of mind to understand. Even trying to truly explain what it is, is kind of difficult. We humans actually are “complex symbol creators” - rather than “language users” - its a wonder we understand each other at all sometimes, and its no wonder that we disagree so much.
- dredmorbius 7y agoFor what it's worth, this native speaker only just a few minutes ago discovered that there are two independently derived roots of "pregnant". (See earlier comment.)
- julian37 7y agoHa! Ok... sorry. I wasn't entirely sure, "pregnant words of poets" are themselves pregnant words of a poet, after all. Anyway, I wasn't trying to be condescending by pointing you at a dictionary -- I'm not a native speaker myself and thought you might find it useful the next time you come across something that doesn't immediately make sense.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bmcfeeley 7y agoPoets pack a lot of meaning / emotion into their words — you could think of them as “full” of the stuff that makes up life, like a pregnant woman is more literally filled with another life.
- harimau777 7y agoProbably the most common use of this meaning for "pregnant" in English is a "pregnant pause"; which are the points during speech where you pause for effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_timing#Pregnant_pause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_timing#Pregnant_pause (Although I've also heard it used for pauses outside of comedy)
- dredmorbius 7y agoThere are apparently two independent derivations of the word "pregnant" (though the roots may join), confusingly, both adjectives. Other than "with child", there is: "convincing, weighty, pithy," late 14c., "cogent, convincing, compelling" (of evidence, an argument, etc.); sense of "full of meaning" is from c. 1400. According to OED from Old French preignant, present participle of preindre "press, squeeze, stamp, crush," from earlier priembre, from Latin premere "to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress" (from PIE root per- (4) "to strike").* https://www.etymonline.com/word/pregnant https://www.etymonline.com/word/pregnant (TIL, for those who'd suspect otherwise. I'm quite a fan of etymology, and Etymology Online in particular.)
- soulofmischief 7y agoI think it has multiple intended meanings. They give life to others. They also carry ideas which implant themselves into others' minds.