Skip to main content

In chapters 5-6, Nick has two big ideas. Was he right or wrong to act out his plan?

Chapter 5:  Mrs. Granger assigned Nick an oral report. His topic was on the origin of words, with a focus on the dictionary. In chapter 5, Nick gave his report. During his report, he touched on the idea that someone has to decide what words mean. His idea was to make his oral report extremely long so that it took up the whole class period. Nick knew that his report "was one of the greatest time-wasters he had ever invented." He was, after all, an expert on wasting time in class.


Chapter 6:  In this chapter, Nick and his friend, Janet, were walking home from school. Janet spotted a fancy looking pen on the ground. She decided to keep it. Then Nick bumped into Janet and the pen fell. He bent down to pick it up and hand it to her.  He handed it to her, but instead of calling it a pen, he called it a "frindle." His idea was to start using the word "frindle" instead of "pen." He did this at school, and he got his classmates to do the same. Mrs. Granger did not like this plan and she found it to be disruptive.


Do you think that Nick's two ideas were good?  For example, his idea to call a pen a "frindle" helped to entertain him and his classmates. However, it caused tension between him and his teacher. Do you think that this idea was right or wrong, based on what happened?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.