I subscribe to Wordsmith's Word-A-Day in hopes of improving my vocabulary, and today's word is mysophobia--fear of dirt. As gardeners, we have to love dirt--let's call it soil to delete the pejorative connotation of "dirty."
The noun "soil" doesn't seem to be "soiled" by its verb form, but "dirt" is "dirtied" by both its verb and adjective ("dirty") forms.
As gardeners, we know that soil is the basis of our gardens. We might think that mysophobics don't know what they are missing!
We improve our soil to improve our crops of flowers or vegetables. Soil is part of the cycle of life. We couldn't exist, we couldn't live without it.
So what's the use of being afraid of dirt?
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Cheryl: Wendy was reading through your blog and just pointed this one out to me. In yet another bit of synchronicity, my buddy the God of Carrots was writing his index/appendix yesterday and dealt with the same issue in his typically informative/irreverent way as follows:
ReplyDelete"dirt: Few humans—and even fewer vegetables—know the difference between dirt and soil (see). Think of it this way: Little humans play in dirt, but soil themselves. There’s got to be a better example than that…
"soil; I grow in soil, not “dirt” (see). I mean what kind of vegetable do you think I am?"
Cheers…
David