Make Your Point > Archived Issues > TRALFAMADORIAN
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Hold onto your astronaut helmet: today's issue is a weird one.
Here's Kurt Vonnegut, from Slaughterhouse-Five:
The most important thing I learned on [the planet] Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
I find that comforting, if silly. I hope you do, too. Vonnegut has so much to offer.
Another novel of his has a two-word title that means "a game of looping string around the fingers of both hands and turning it into complicated shapes; or, something complicated, with many interrelated parts."
Can you recall it? Here it is in an example: "Kurt Vonnegut's novel C__'_ C_____ explores the interplay of science, religion, humanity, and technology."
Getting back to our bizarre word Tralfamadorian, let's place it on a shelf with Brobdingnagian and lilliputian. Besides arising from literary fiction, these terms have something more specific in common--what is it? Hint: they're slightly different from other literary terms we've checked out, like Panglossian, Samsonian, and Micawber.
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make your point with...
"TRALFAMADORIAN"
When the novelist Kurt Vonnegut was a kid, he made up a planet called Tralfamadore. ("Tralfamadore" probably doesn't have any meaningful roots or pieces in it--it's just a string of whimsical syllables.)
When Vonnegut wrote his novels, he often included in them that made-up planet, Tralfamadore. The creatures that live there, he wrote, are called Tralfamadorians. They're cute, friendly, shaped like plungers, blessed with intelligence and a great sense of humor, and because they can perceive all of time all at once, they don't worry about death, free will, or destiny. When they witness death, they just say "So it goes."
So, call someone or something Tralfamadorian when you mean that it has a peaceful attitude of acceptance toward death and destiny, or it seems to zip around in time, or it seems to understand or express everything all at the same time.
Pronunciation:
Probably "TRAL fam uh DORE ee un."
I should probably admit at this point that "Tralfamadorian" doesn't yet appear in dictionaries, so I don't have an authoritative pronunciation for you. What I do know is that, in a video, Vonnegut pronounces "Tralfamadore" as "TRAL FAM uh DORE," so I'm taking my best guess at how we should pronounce "Tralfamadorian."
Part of speech:
Adjective, the proper kind, so you always capitalize it: "a Tralfamadorian vision," "their outlook is Tralfamadorian."
Other forms:
Tralfamadore, Tralfamadorians, and--why not?--Tralfamadorianly
How to use it:
When you're willing to risk sounding nutty, overly literary, or both, then refer to people, things, perspectives, ideas, experiences, creations, performances and so on as Tralfamadorian.
And if you're talking with (or writing for) people who might be unfamiliar with Vonnegut's novels, just make sure that your context helps them understand what you mean.
examples:
I wonder if her "SO IT GOES" tattoo is purposefully Tralfamadorian, or just a daily reminder to choose acceptance over despair.
When you write about fiction, you always use the present tense. I love that. You leave the stories where they are, in their Tralfamadorian state: Tom is always painting the fence, Emma is always staring out her window, and Harry is always boarding the train for Hogwarts.
has this page helped you understand "Tralfamadorian"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "Tralfamadorian" without saying "calmly accepting" or "perceiving large stretches of time all at once."
try it out:
Fill in the blanks: "(Someone) reflects on the past, seeing like a Tralfamadorian (a certain string of events), as if they were all still happening."
Example: "Billy Collins reflects on the past in his poem 'Nostalgia,' seeing like a Tralfamadorian the games and dances of centuries gone by, as if they were all still happening."
before you review, play:
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
In August, we're playing the time-honored Game of Venery!
We're inventing terms for groups of things: terms that James Lipton, the author of An Exaltation of Larks, calls "shards of poetry and truth." Example terms of venery include lovely ones like "a conflagration of fireflies" and silly ones like "a myopia of umpires," "a rash of dermatologists," and "an unemployment of graduates."
In each issue this month, I'll offer two templates. Have fun filling them in and sharing your inventions with your family, being as lofty, silly, or bawdy as you like. In each subsequent issue, I'll list the actual terms that appear in Lipton's book.
From the previous issue:
1. A discord of _____
2. A _____ of tour guides
The terms listed in the book are "a discord of experts" and "a Weltschmerz of tour guides."
Try these today:
1. An evanescence of _____
2. A _____ of blues (the musical genre)
review this word:
1. A near opposite of TRALFAMADORIAN is
A. FROZEN IN TIME.
B. HEAVY WITH GUILT.
C. SILENT IN THOUGHT.
2. When I play the soundtrack to the musical Les Miserables, I listen to the songs _____, a kind of Tralfamadorian experience.
A. on shuffle, in random order
B. quietly, as I page through the novel
C. while picturing the actors from the modern remake
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Hold onto your astronaut helmet: today's issue is a weird one. When the novelist Kurt Vonnegut was a kid, he made up a planet called Tralfamadore. ("Tralfamadore" probably doesn't have any meaningful roots or pieces in it--it's just a string of whimsical syllables.)
I wonder if her "SO IT GOES" tattoo is purposefully Tralfamadorian, or just a daily reminder to choose acceptance over despair.
Explain the meaning of "Tralfamadorian" without saying "calmly accepting" or "perceiving large stretches of time all at once."
Fill in the blanks: "(Someone) reflects on the past, seeing like a Tralfamadorian (a certain string of events), as if they were all still happening."
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
1. A near opposite of TRALFAMADORIAN is
|