How do I love words? Let me count the synonyms!
Drifting in the cosmos
One earthbound traveler
Shipwrecked by birth
On a feckless speck of orb
Drifting through eddies
Of space and time
Within an eternal infinity
Of near emptiness
What other glories
In a vastness beyond imagining
Could I be missing
There is nothing aimless about a big cat on the prowl.
Imminent lethal intent. Focused. Targeted. Stealthy.
Although I understand completely why the various ways we use prowl made the list of roam synonyms, the word’s essential meaning makes it an antonym to every synonym since linger.
Prowl is a word with purpose, weapons locked. A black panther in the darkness, preparing to pounce.
There’s a sense of aimlessness to meander. It’s possible to meander an infinitely long time in a fairly confined space, get nowhere at all, and arrive back exactly where you started. Meander connotes a sort of feckless purposelessness which also infects most of its synonyms. But there is one…
Maybe roam offers a better indication of how I travel, how I move through life and existence. The point of roaming is to leave the boundaries of a confined space, whether geographical, cultural, emotional, philosophical, spiritual or any other kind of confinement we care to consider.
OK. I admit it. I looked ahead.
I wasn’t really feeling anything from any of these synonyms, so I looked a few of them up and picked the one with the most promising synonyms for the next round.
Meander.
Don’t get me wrong. Meander’s a fine word, even if I did sort of meander into it. Now that I’m starting to write about it, meander’s kinda growing on me. That tends to happen a lot with me, meandering into just the right place.
“If you didn’t spend so much time dilly-dallying maybe you wouldn’t be up so late finishing your homework.”
These aren’t specific memories from my childhood. Some things happen so frequently specific incidences get lost in the flood. My father threw the word dilly-dally at me and my sisters so often it seemed more a condition of of our existence than a word. “Quit yer dilly-dallying and get the dishes done!”
It’s kinda hard to not go with Dawdle here. I mean… this is one of those words that looks, sounds and even feels like what it means. Dawdle. Aurally, it sounds like a cousin to doddering, which also speaks to an absent-minded state of … not quite confusion … meandering ambivalence (also a great word).
Linger’s another one of those words that tastes good as you say it. It is as sensuous as the sensations of any moment it draws out. Lingering is just such a satisfying activity. Languorous, sensual… it evokes an awareness for a purposeful state of extended experience, to enjoy the moment… for just a little longer, a lingering touch, a lingering glance. Perhaps anticipation, to enjoy the tension of waiting for a moment yet to come, to teeter a bit on the edge of fulfillment. Sometimes to bask in consummate satisfaction. Always an expanded experience of the present.
I wasn’t overly fond of the “most relevant” options for synonyms (abide, combat, confront, continue, curb, defy, endure, forgo, maintain, prevent, refuse, repel, and thwart) so I dug a little deeper into the thesaurus and found a couple entries with a bit more appeal: persevere and persist. Both these words evoke a proactive alternative to resistance. I’m going with persist partly because it rhymes with resist.
As global demonstrations to end racism in all its forms spread; as the authoritarian ramifications of populism strain the world’s leading democracies; as the the destructive, oppressive nature of wealth inequality worldwide thrusts the world’s middle-classes into vulnerability, and the already vulnerable into life-threatening conditions: how could I refrain from choosing resist?
One of Melody’s synonyms is Refrain which inspired this micro-poem:
Refrain
He thought to himself
In the moment between
Circumstance
And the need to respond to
Consequence
So that the one thing
He could not do was
Refrain
Thesaurus Game 