Words & Language: September 2005 Archives

monkey-button

To incorrectly button or zip a shirt or sweater. Generally creates a kind of strange lopsidedness where the collar of a shirt doesn't line up properly.

Usage: "It looks like you monkey-buttoned your shirt."

I had never heard this phrase before this week when co-worker wore a stylish sweater which looked as if it might have been monkey-buttoned, but wasn't. I used to have to have monkey-buttoning problems a lot as a child. I've mostly grown out of monkey-buttoning, but it still happens sometimes.

Parting by Emily Dickinson.

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

For the last few weeks I've been working my way through "The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson." I had read bits and pieces of her work before but had never tried to work through the entire canon. The more I read, the more amazed I am at both her ability to capture emotions and how thoroughly modern her writing is. (No, I don't care if you can sing them all to the yellow rose of Texas.)

[Poem Courtesy of the Writers Almanac]