A Philosopher's Lexicon: Vocab that'll make you sound like an academic

Although curated by a philosophy major for philosophy, the following list of vocabulary is a great addition to any intellectual's written or spoken lexicon!

Verbs to Replace "Says" or "Thinks"

Verbs to Replace "Shows" or "Explains"

(There's a bit of room for overlap between the "Says" or "Thinks" list and the "Shows" or "Explains" list).

Words to Describe Perspectives or Approaches

Words to Describe Statements

Transitional Phrases

Words for Critique, Analysis, or Inquiry

Descriptive Words for Ideas or Concepts

Words for Nuanced Argumentation

Remember, the key is not just to use these words, but to understand them fully so you can wield them effectively. Context is king; make sure the word or phrase fits seamlessly into your argument.

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Imagine trying to cram all those words into just a couple of paragraphs... not saying you should do it, but it might be a fun challenge, no?

If you're interested in more academic writing tips, feel free to explore the #AcademicWriting and #WritingTips tags on my blog. To distinguish between my original content and reblogs, you can filter the tags #LiaLifeLounge and #LiaReblogs, respectively.

Have fun writing! ✨

Narcissus taking a selfie is the ACTUAL best.

These are REALLY cool

These are art in themselves, in a some of them point out what lockdown was like for us, they’re expressed themselves in a really cool way. But I think these are going to be talked about in the future.

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

i need all the help i can get for finals

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

what the hell? i could use some luck *hits reblog*

World Heritage Post

reblogging again… need it bad lol 

Happiness Will Come To You.

when tho

When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March

reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!

i dont think we give karl urban enough credit for his acting in this extended edition scene of eomer discovering eowyn in pelennor fields because. my goodness

tags via @penandpage

Tags are fantastic, and if you’re on the fence about reading the books please know Eomer finds her before the battle ends in the original, and thinking she is dead goes absolutely feral on the enemy.

The narration is even like “newly king, Eomer says FUCK TACTICS LETS KILL ORCS, and it is not a good decision but he sure did make it emphatically.”

brian kershiznik / franz stuck / lane demoll / words of lane demoll in the description of their painting “circle dance (six witches)”

Cave Painting, Dance Scene

Simhat Torah by Lloyd Bloom (1984)

David Seymour, Children of Europe (Budapest, Hungary. 1948)

here is a thesis for those who are interested in the circle dance The Circle in Dance Movement Therapy. A literature review. by Elena Karampoula

Los Niños (The Children) by Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia, 1960.

I need this.

Reblogged last year, hoping it comes this year

Iceland’s Traditional Woman’s Dress

The power of positive expectations...

rating actual medieval names i have found as a medieval studies student but they get progressively more unhinged:

Anyway here's some additions from the Maasai and Kikuyu, two grassy plain-dwelling groups from Eastern Africa that I think count as unfuckwithable

Feel like Poland should be included since we're literally called "people of the fields" according to the etymology of Poland.

Also look at her GO

I’m Métis, here’s some of ours! You’ll notice it looks remarkably similar to the above.

We also have some less intricate clothing (if it looks a bit Victorian to you - that’s pretty much the right era for most of this!)

Can’t believe no one’s done it yet I will be the person to add the cowboys: Latin American focus.

Here is the Chilean huaso:

Gauchos, from primarily Argentina where they’re a large national symbol close to the level of cowboys in the US. Also gauchos are in Uruguay.  Their pants are called bombachas and the other garment wrapped around them are called chiripas.  They work in grasslands called pampas, known for being really fertile:

While they’re not as dressed up as the others or have as prominent of a culture, for a broader Latin American cowboy context, I feel like also adding llaneros, who are from Colombia and Venezuela, in the llanos region, a type of tropical grassland similar to the pampas, hence the name llanero. Pampas get annual flooding and these guys would go barefoot a lot, and you can see that the stirrup on the horse’s saddle is really different than what you’re probably used to seeing, to accommodate for that, which is what I want to point out as an aspect of plains cultures developing clothing/accessories/tools to suit the environment. 

Cowboy culture happened wherever Spanish colonial influence and grassland biomes came together.  They differ based on the grasslands having different climates (ex tropical in South America), and the local indigenous influence (ex, backtracking to gauchos, they would use this tool called bolas to catch animals, which were basically two balls tied to a string that you threw and it spun around an animals legs, and were an indigenous invention):

I would love to keep posting cowboy dress lol but will stick to the post’s theme of grassland of course.  

Adding to the post, I, hereby, present people of Kalash and Chitral:

Chitral means ‘field’ in the native language Khowar. Both Chitralis and people of Kalash are known to be indigenous people of Asia.

Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?

Mine is probably the ‘everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown’ aesthetic.

Same. Also the idea that “women were property so they did nothing but sew and have babies and the time was inherently backwards and violent”

the complete absence of christianity from pop culture perceptions of the medieval period really bugs me (or it being relegated to the fringes and a few monks somewhere)

like… this was a major part of most people’s daily lives even if it didn’t necessarily look like christianity as we know it. also medieval theology is fucking wild! where are all the debates about cannibal babies in pop culture medieval stuff? WHERE is the twelfth century werewolf renaissance? the fuckign infancy gospels?? give me weird medieval theology you cowards

A lot of them had already been mentioned, so may I add

“The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread”

I’m studying English language and literature, not History, but like… Pork vs Pig… Deer vs Venison… Cow vs Beef… May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT

And not even like we do

Where’s the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like… I saw one when little), why not portray one?

And more importantly

WHERE’S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???

GIVE ME CHICKEN WITH HELMET OR GIVE ME DEATH

Yeah, and for better or for worse they were much less picky about which animals they ate than we are. Porpoise, anyone?

Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I’d associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren’t a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.

Also please link me a picture of the chicken with helmet if you can, I need to see this.

Here it is

Here’s a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken… But that’s a chicken with a helmet

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.

Hollywood has a tendency to portray the past as “just like today, minus whatever of today’s things we know they didn’t have.” There’s no concept that the past had things that today doesn’t.

Like bawdy medicinal tips.

@candiceirae

The idea that people used spices to cover spoiled meat is similarly stupid and utterly infuriating.

And yes, the gaping absence of religion from depictions of the Middle Ages is jarring.

All of this, but mostly that they existed in a sepia toned world with no color, pattern, or texture.

Going off the colors of textiles, the assumption that their textiles were always crude and rough compared to today’s. Think of the twills and brocades! The cloth of gold! The silks, and the wool so gauzy you could see through it! The soft wool clothing! The quality and variety of fabric we have available has plummetted since the industrial revolution.

beyond conventional spices the medieval cook and especially the resourceful housewife would have been exploiting herbs by the fistfull on a level we today cannot comprehend, like we dont even know what some of the names of herbs they used even mean anymore and they grew them like suburban homeowners today grow ugly border hedges. whatever soups they had access to had a decent chance of being something that would be 100% locally grown and every bit as flavorful as any regonal dish today withiout having to resort to saying ‘well they could possibly have been eating curry’ instead of giving them a flavor identity of their own. just because ‘spice’ isnt readily available dont assume ‘flavor’ is out of reach, the aromatics they used would be on par with the modern french concept of mirepoix but, moving past the kitchen the two things that irk me are that everyone toiled miserably and everything was grey stone, rudely carved buildings, shoddy construction unadorned well yeah, if you went to a decrepit ruin thats been abandoned for centuries it would look like that, but not when people lived there! you see the shows and movies and sweet baby cheese the kings residence looks like a dank basement and sometimes he doesnt even have a change of clothes when castles were in use they were prominent displays of power and wealth, whitewashed so that even small amounts of light reflected well inside them so that they illuminated well, paintings and murals in a riot of colors and displaying personal tastes, tapestries that may be the local lords wife, aunt, or grandmothers gift to them as tappestry making was a popular hobby at court where women gathered to gossip and giggle while making vibrantly colored decorations that are usually dismissed because the only ones that survive had endured about 500 years of sun damage, smoke damage, and uncertain cleaning history

that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay… those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready

how about this- in all the versions of robin hood i have -EVER- seen the most historically accurate any of them got was the scene in kevin costner ‘king of theves’ where friar tuck was singing to himself while on the road ‘women wine and whoring’. not just because its one of the only times in any medieval period movie ive seen someone singing to pass the time in the mind-numbing hours of traveling before the invention of the car radio, but ALSO because they based the tune he sings off the classic ‘ Bache Benne Venies’, the oldest known drinking song we still know the words and tune of and let me tell you that song slaps talk to me about historical accuracy in movies and ill tell you that tolkein writing hobbit songs for walking, drinking, or describing what an elephant was was more historically accurate then all of GOT passed through a sieve to collect every grain of stray element of medievalness gaily dressed hobbits full of pie, sitting in a well decorated room full of beautiful hand carved furniture, on their fifth ale, and singing about the man in the moon getting shitfaced is about ten times historically accurate as most anything else i can think of if you ignored the historical accuracy of them being hobbits

To be clear, when I say ‘like Indian food’, I’m not generalising or trying to deny them their own flavour profile, I’m talking about how Forme of Cury uses things like cardamom, ginger, and pepper that I’ve also had in curry or kheer. I’m just comparing it to the closest thing I’ve eaten, not saying the two are the same. My voice teacher did once make me a medieval French bean dish with duck and smoked bacon, and it was excellent.

But yeah, I know that some people get exasperated by the number of songs that Tolkien has in his books, but I really think it completes the world. It makes it feel fleshed out and more enjoyable and individual in its own right but also ties it to history. Singing is such an accessible pastime and I really don’t think people in fantasy do enough of it. (And as a bonus, Tolkien also gives us some Middle-earth lore in his lyrics. Which is great for the reader and also reflects how important an oral information-sharing tradition is within the world itself.)

I will say that even though I’m not a fan of many of the creative choices made in GoT, I can understand GRRM making his world in ASoIaF a bleaker place than is realistic because part of the whole thing of low fantasy is The World Is Shitty. I’ve heard people say that Dunk and Egg is a less depressing story and it’s more of just a fun knight adventure. I’d like to read it. I definitely enjoyed ASoIaF, but it’s just so heavy sometimes. As for GoT, I never finished it.

Ok so I cannot speak to the accuracy of everything here, but let me tell you a little bit about textiles because (obviously this is news to everyone) I Love Them.

I studied late antique textiles in undergrad. Late antiquity is a weird period with multiple different scholarly definitions, but the gist is that it’s the transition period between the ancient and medieval worlds. Christianity was a thing, but people were also still heavily influenced by older stories/mythologies/religions (the vast majority of textiles that survive from this period come from Egypt because of the climate, so in this case it’s Greek and Roman traditions that still hold influence).

Anyway. The textiles from this weird nebulous period of history are straight-up gorgeous, and not just to a nerd of my particular type. Take a look at Dumbarton Oaks or the Met’s collections and come tell me that ancient/medieval hand-woven textiles were all rough and poorly made. And you know why people spent so many hours making these beautiful things painstakingly by hand? (Every single step of the process, by the way - shearing, carding, spinning, dying, all before you get to the actual weaving. This stuff was incredibly skilled, intensive labor.) They did it because textiles were incredibly important. We don’t think much of them now that they can be mass-produced, but there was a whole Thing with the Virgin Mary spinning and metaphors about her weaving Christ on a loom, and textiles were used for protective magic, and they were part of everything important in people’s lives.

There were dyes that were prohibitively expensive, yes - Tyrian purple is literally still so expensive that we couldn’t buy a big enough sample to test our actual antique textiles against effectively. In the Byzantine Empire, it was controlled exclusively by the imperial family - hence the whole royal purple thing. But guess what? There are so many purple textiles, because people used other things! Madder and indigo! Both affordable! Mix them together and you get a very pretty color. Change up the mordants you use to seal the dyes and you can get a whole range of different colors out of one plant!

And people took these things and they wove them into literal artwork and wore it around on their clothes. They had hangings on their walls for decoration, sure (and also insulation and noise control), but they also had curtains! Textiles separated rooms the way wooden doors do now! The reason I have a weird thing for liminal spaces is because textiles were associated with them, and they were given power. The hanging in your doorway could protect your home from misfortune. Protective symbols around the neck and sleeves of your tunic could keep you from getting ill. And all of these things were pretty and colorful and painstakingly crafted by laypeople and professionals alike, and they were everywhere.

Basically, the ancient and medieval worlds were alive and full of color and magic. Not gray stone and plain cloth and misery.

And also textiles are important and you should love them.

ALSO this is what Roman socks looked like, and aren’t they adorable!

(This particular one is a child’s sock and it’s from the Royal Ontario Museum. A lot of other examples are red, possibly because red was a protective color - it’s also more common in surviving children’s items, likely because of high infant mortality and a need for extra protection for kids. Red was also common as a border color around sleeves and necklines and such - this is the liminal spaces thing I was squealing about!)

renaissance in the 21st century

some more

the WHAT??

okay, found her

some more good replies from the notes

i didnt expect these to hit so hard but then they kept going and going….my god

Abandoned structures reclaimed by nature.

A harmless child can trap even the scariest nightmare If they know how

Zagоvory (with zagovor as a singular form), in Eastern Slavic mythology are a form of verbal folk magic. Users of zagovory could enchant objects or people with these words. Having arisen from pagan prayers and incantations, zagovory were initially based on belief in the power of the human word. That is why the exact pronunciation of words (whispered or sung) and performance of the accompanying rites were considered as significant (for instance, zagovory practitioner should have either a full set of teeth or a knife as a symbolic substitute of lacking ones). Zagovory tradition survived until 20th century in popular folk culture, often under guise of a Christian “noncanonical prayer”.

Lady Midnight, Don’t walk at night, Don’t bring troubles. Here’s a job for you: Some beads to count.

Kotodama or kototama (言霊, lit. ‘word spirit/soul’) refers to the Japanese belief that mystical powers dwell in words and names. English translations include “soul of language”, “spirit of language”, “power of language”, “power word”, “magic word”, and “sacred sound”. The notion of kotodama presupposes that sounds can magically affect objects, and that ritual word usages can influence our environment, body, mind, and soul.

- wikipedia

reminds me of the rhyme to deter nøkken, “nykk, nykk, nål i vatn, jomfru Maria kasta stål i vatn, du søkk, eg flyt” involving invoking the virgin Mary, naming the entity, and the use of steel.

yes, I say this whenever I have to go close to water in the forest. Better safe than sorry.

Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) also ascribes spiritual dimensions to words and language and even the accents on words.  Also, some Jews refer to G-d as “HaShem”  (השם), which translates literally to “The Name.”

I cannot express how much I love that so many vastly disparate cultures have looked at the concept of language and human communication and said “Yes, that.  That’s magic.”

Cultural infodump under my drawing and I loOove it

You have met Morpheous. Who the Romans called the Shaper of Form. He was once my husband, and the father of my son.

THE SANDMAN 1.06 | The Sound of Her Wings