One of the best lingustic minds out there blogging.Ī blog about the arts, books, flora and fauna, vittles, and whatever comes to mind. Terms and conditions: by reading this blog you accept that all opinions expressed herein will henceforth be your opinions. Permanently angry about the abuse of English, maths and logic. Patrick Neylan, Eeditor of business reports. Michael Quinion’s site based on his book Ologies and Isms. Affixes: the building blocks of English.What this is: 1 photo + 1 word x 366 days. You flare up with a sfz and then, over your embers, we cook s’mores (obviously this is a biiiig candle) as you die away and are ultimately extinguished… deliciously, of course: it’s all about the musical effect, the beautiful slow deliquium. It’s more closely related to a causative form – i.e., ‘cause to die’. Smorzando is the present participle of smorzare, which comes from dis and morzare, which is related to morire, which means ‘die’. In the case of smorzando it intensifies or supports. In some cases this dis is a negator in others, it’s an intensifier. What many of these have in common with smorzando is that the s is what’s left of a prefix that used to have a full syllable – often dis. Have you noticed how Italian has an assortment of words that begin with s followed by another consonant that we wouldn’t put s before in English? Aside from sforzando you may (or may not) recognize sbarro, perhaps sbaglio, sfortunato, sdraiarsi, sdegnare, sfogato, sfumato, sveglia, svolgere, or any of quite a few others. Know what else is extinguished? The beginning of the word. So it’s “smorts.” Or, to be more in line with the Italian pronunciation, “zmorts.”) If a smorzando is well accomplished, you may be snoring by the end, your wakefulness also extinguished (until the person next to you swats you after one of your snorts). (It helps to remember that in Italian, and in this loan from Italian, the z is. You can almost see it, can’t you? Someone smothering a fire with a wet blanket: smorz, smorz, smorz. The sound dies away, getting fainter and slower. Or, more precisely, smorzando means ‘extinguishing’. Here’s your musical lesson: smorz means ‘lessen’. S’mores may be moreish, but smorzando is decidedly lessish. Well, in this case, not dying the death of deaths, but dying away. Just as the actual line that I just punned on from the requiem is mors stupebit, “death will be stunned,” the morz in smorzando refers to dying. Imagine eating a whole box of those! Smorz stupebit indeed!īut there’s our cue. Things are going to get mighty gooey mighty quick around here! And, to reinforce that, there’s a s’mores-themed breakfast cereal called… oh, yes it is… Smorz. So the first thing you think is likely along the lines of “S’mores! Oh yes!” Ah, toasted marshmallows and melting chocolate between graham crackers. It’s not typically written out in full in a score, but it’s also not written as smz. The difference starts in what you see on the page. There is only one letter of difference in the word, but smorzando is more of a smothering counterpart to the firework of the sforzando. People who read sheet music are likely familiar with sforzando, the dynamic instruction usually marked on the page with sfz, which might look like a logo for some luxury item but to me resembles the mark and sound made when swatting or stifling a small insect – not an inapposite impression, since a sforzando is a sudden bit of loudness, a thing that could make the audience jump.
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