Chrysti The Wordsmith: Alliterative Cliches - 3

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in two or more neighboring words. Consider the repetition of consonants in our common expressions bolt from the blue tempest in a teapot and dead as a doornail. We English speakers love these kinds of air to expression. We keep them around even when they're redundant or happen to be dragging around an archaic term. Such a phrase is vim and vigor are redundant alliterative formula with both of its nouns meaning enthusiasm vitality and energy. The term vim is the odd one in this expression because we rarely see it apart from it's alliterative companion vigor and nobody is certain where the word came from. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary offers two possibilities. The first has it deriving from a form of the Latin noun vse meaning strength or energy. The second less academic possibility is that vim is an interjection or auto model Pia suggesting something executed with

force. For example a citation from 1850 uses vim. This way quote he thought of his spurs so he riz up and drove them vim in the hosses flanks village was twinned with vigor by American English speakers. Sometime in the late 1800s giving us a pleasing alliterative formula to express the notion of vitality energy and enthusiasm. I'm Christi the wordsmith from Montana State University in Bozeman Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.