The Australian spelling is penelopise and the American spelling is penelopize.
It relates to having a way of gaining time when you're putting off something you don't want to do. In the original case, Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, wanted to stave off agreeing to marry any of her pressing suitors, because she hoped her missing husband would come home. (He did.) She said she'd choose someone when she'd finished a tapestry she was working on. Each morning she would pull out the work she'd done the night before.
So, each time life is getting me down with too many stresses, I can penelopise, by simply walking out the door with Penny and setting off to enjoy the neighborhood. We all know that as soon as you come indoors from walking the dog, she's ready for the next one, so it's just like Penelope's tapestry.
Penny's not actually named after Penelope. She's named after the penny coin, because she was such a lovely copper color as a puppy.
If you'd like to read more about this word, I've blogged about it over on my Word Blog.
6 comments:
Precious photo! Mommy has a picture from an old calendar with a cat sitting on a scale. Now, when Mommy looks at the picture of the cat, she can think of Penny sitting on the scale too.
Lassiter Chase and T, I just love this photo, so I'm glad you did too.
Oh my dog - such an adorable photo!
Stewey
Stewie, it sure is an adorable pic, as you say, but not half as adorable as all those outfits you model on your own blog.
I have unpicked plenty of tapestry, just not on purpose (well, I suppose it was on purpose in that I wanted to make it better). Not sure whether I will call it unweaving (as some of my friends call it), unpicking or penelopising.
Mary, I reckon you'll have to stick with 'unweaving', because you can't call it penelopising unless your aim was to postpone something you didn't want to happen.
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