Tonight’s fine distinctions are “Proverb” vs “Adage” vs “Maxim” vs “Aphorism” vs “Epigram.”
Okay! All of these have to do with truisms, little bits of wisdom in small digestible form.
Proverbs are traditional and folksy. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Adages are old and well-known. “The best defense is a good offense.”
Maxims are rules of conduct. “Know thyself.”
Aphorisms are philosophical. “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” —Lao Tzu
Epigrams (which I don’t think I’d heard of until tonight!) are witty. “One should always play fairly…when one has the winning cards.” —Oscar Wilde
The book notes that these last two are usually distinguishable from the three previous because they’re attributable to a single person. When their author becomes obscured by time or general use, they usually slide into the proverbial, adage, or maxim. Fun, right? Love it 🙂
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A…productive day. Got my writing all done for the first time in a long time. AND, I think I have my twist. My gasp-inducing moment of truth that we didn’t expect, but then in retrospect we look back and think “…oh yeah.” So, that’s good. Except I think it will take re-jigging things. We’ll see. It came right at the end of the day, as things like that usually do, so I shall tackle the implication tomorrow.
It’s a relief, to be honest. I’ve known from the very beginning that I needed to dig on this story until I found something that would truly make reading this short story worthwhile. That there was, in fact, MUCH MORE to the story than we already knew. And now I have it. I think. Pretty sure. We’ll see.
Work was light today, thank goodness. I’ve been going pretty hard these past couple weeks. And I know there’s more to come.
Pups are good. Warriors won. I got all my Shakespeare reading done. I’m onto Midsummer! It’s instantly, already, so good. He really learned some shit. And/or it was popular enough it got several rewrites. But, yeah. It’s great.
Night night. A good day.