Pinktober heralds the arrival of so much pink that some of us run screaming from the sight of it, despite the good intentions of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As I explain how I have made my peace with pink, you might feel better about your own choices.
PUBLISHED October 02, 2018
Felicia Mitchell is a poet and writer who makes her home in southwestern Virginia, where she teaches at Emory & Henry College. She was diagnosed with Stage 2b HER2-positive breast cancer in 2010. Website: www.feliciamitchell.net
Pink, pronounced "pingk," is a simple word: one morpheme, one syllable, four graphemes (letters). Even the internal vowel sound is a simple monophthong, although sometimes I speak the word to see if it is influenced by my southern drawl to include a diphthong. With the right intonation, "pink" does take on a twang.
While the origin of the word is not certain, according to "Oxford English Dictionary," it likely entered the English language as a word for a color (some combination of red and white) because of the pink flower family. As I have learned on hikes with naturalists, the flowers of this Dianthus family need not be colored pink. There are pink, red and white pinks in the natural world.
No comments:
Post a Comment