What Is Comradery?

• Comradery is a spirit of friendship and community between two people or a group of people.
• Camaraderie is the more popular spelling, but comradery is an acceptable alternate.

Comradery is easy to find among the members of a winning team. Victorious teammates might high-five each other and recount the highlights of the game. Success creates a bond for the players that often continues off the court. But what is happening on the opposite side of the court? You may notice the defeated team going through a comradery ritual of their own. Instead of celebrating, they might be consoling one another and commending each other for trying their best. What is comradery?

Comradery or Camaraderie

You might already be wondering whether comradery is the same as camaraderie, so let’s address that issue first. Camaraderie came to English from French around 1835. In French, camarade was the word for a roommate or a companion. It you trace camarade back further, you will find that French got it from Old Spanish, which borrowed it from Latin! Camera is the Latin term for chamber, a room where you sleep or spend a lot of time. What about comradery? It came from comrade, a derivative of the the same Middle French word that inspired camaraderie. Around 1879, some writers (no doubt influenced by the pattern established by words like citizenry) began adding the -ry suffix to comrade to form comradery.

The next question is, which one is right? Camaraderie? Comradery? Is one way of writing the word more correct than the other spelling? Dictionaries list both spellings, so they are both correct. However, if you look at the frequency of use for each word, you will find that camaraderie is more than forty times as common as comradery in print sources. Which form you choose depends on your preference, but you should take your audience into consideration. Which spelling will be the most familiar or understandable for them?

Be careful of misspellings. It’s easy to confuse the two forms if you are not careful. The most common wrong spellings on the web are mishmashes of the two correct spellings:

comaraderie, comraderie, comrodery, cameradery

The Pronunciation of Comradery

Camaraderie sounds like kahm-rah-duh-ree. Some speakers pronounce comradery as kom-rad-ree. Therefore, though camaraderie and comradery are interchangeable in meaning, transcriptionists must write the version used by the speaker. They must listen carefully to the vowels and number of syllables to distinguish comradery from camaraderie.

Comradery Definition and Meaning

There’s no difference in the meaning of camaraderie and comradery. Comradery is a spirit of friendship and community between two people or a group of people. The memberse of the group are comfortable around each other, and they support each other. This word is often applied to sports teams or to groups of soldiers. Let’s learn from some quotes about team comradery.

Examples of Team Comradery

The girls are all talking and laughing, trying to get pumped up and for just one small sliver of a moment, I stop. Taking it all in because this is something I’ve really missed over the last year. The comradery of a team. The sisterhood of hockey players. Girls who have your back. —Jennifer Sucevic, Stay

It’s comradery, it’s team building, it’s fun to come out here and just push yourself to the limit. The proceeds stay local and people know it and and people come out and push themselves. —WIVB.com

I loved the world of roller derby because I thought it was such an empowering metaphor, that you get out there and do it. It’s such a rocker, athletic, capable, cool exhibitionist sport; it’s about this great sort of camaraderie. — Drew Barrymore

Other Instances of Comradery

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. —Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

This good fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. —Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Political Definition and Usage of Comradery

As you learned earlier, comradery derives from comrade. A comrade is a fellow member of a group, an associate, or a person who does the same activities that you do. However, around the nineteenth century, members of the Communist party began to refer to each other as comrades. According to an article in the South China Morning Post, “consolidation among party members and . . . the idea of equality” were the characteristics of the term that attracted the attention of the Communist Party. Today, comrade may carry a political connotation—in particular, it may imply that someone has extremely leftist views on issues. However, the same connotation doesn’t necessarily carry over to the use of comradery, unless the context suggests a political affiliation. Here are some quotes featuring comrade from popular media sources:

China Seeks to Improve Ties With ‘Comrade’ Vietnam” —The Wall Street Journal

At the [White House Correspondents’ Dinner], Obama played on that comparison, calling Sanders his “comrade,” a term often associated with the communist Soviet Union. —Bustle

Air show pilots performed an aerial salute Saturday to their comrade who died after his World War II-era plane crashed in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey a day earlier. —NBCNewYork.com

How to Use Comradery

Now that you’ve seen how writers use it, how can you use comradery in a sentence? Comradery is a noun, so it can be the subject or the object of the sentence.

Comradery is what kept the coworkers on good terms during a challenging work assignment.

Soldiers who have fought together against a common enemy form a comradery that is like no other feeling in the world.

What about making the noun plural? Comradery and camaraderie are noncount nouns, so you can’t make them plural by adding an S. They don’t have plural forms.

After ten years of marriage, there was great comradery between the husband and wife.

A little bit of camaraderie goes a long way.

Camaraderie/Comradery Synonyms

What words are like comradery? Studying them can help you get a deeper understanding of what it really means. Notice how these near synonyms relate to comradery:

• Bonhomie, like camaraderie, has French origins. Bon means good and homme means man. Bonhomie is a good-natured, friendly manner.
• A brotherhood is a group of people engaged in the same trade or who have the same qualities or interests. It also refers to fellowship.
• Conviviality is friendliness or agreeableness.
• Companionship is fellowship, especially the type of fellowship that comes from being in the company of someone else.
• Comradeship is a sense of friendship with others who share the same goals.
• Friendship is an intimate or friendly relationship.
• Intimacy is a close bond with another person, often accompanied by feelings of affection and familiarity.
• Togetherness is warm fellowship.

Camaraderie/Comradery Antonyms

On the other side of the coin, antonyms show you what comradery is not. The list includes some pretty gloomy words that should help you appreciate the positivity of comradery. Here are the top four opposites.

• Bad blood is an idiomatic expression that refers to bitter feelings between two people or groups.
• Dislike is a feeling of antagonism or hatred for someone.
• Forlornness is a feeling of isolation and alienation.
• Loneliness is a feeling of solitude and isolation.
• Lonesomeness is a painful feeling of solitariness, depression, or sadness caused by a lack of companionship.

Comradery vs. Morale

Another term you hear associated with teams, groups, and the military is morale. What is the relationship between comradery and morale? Morale is the general emotion or mental state of the members of a group. Low morale would indicate that the individuals in the group have low spirits. They might feel discouraged, depressed, or sad. High morale means that individuals are feeling well and happy. If comradery is absent, morale is likely to be low. Travis Valentine, a blogger, explains: “Low morale isn’t ideal, but the negative effects it has can be overcome with good camaraderie because good camaraderie can’t be beat.” Do you see the relation?

For a sports team, a sense of comradery and morale is highest while celebrating a win. However, a defeat can also draw a team closer together. Because soldiers spend a lot of time in each other’s company and go through intense experiences together, they often develop lifelong friendships characterized by goodwill and friendliness. Any group that spends a lot of time pursuing a common goal can cultivate the quality of comradery.

Comradery is an alternate spelling of camaraderie that carries the same meaning of friendly intimacy among members of a group. To use the term properly, you will have to remember that it’s a non-count noun. Learning so much about comradery places you among a select few who know its origins. So if you see comradery properly used in writing, you may feel an instant bond with the author!

Not-So-Sweet 16: Email Autonotification Hell vs. Should’ve Messaged

The Not-So-Sweet 16 rages on with this set of obnoxious inbox-stuffers. Which bothers you more, autonotification emails, or emails from coworkers who should have messaged you elsewhere? Honestly, we don’t love either.

Ready to vote to determine the next round of March MADness? We know we are!

Autonotification Email Hell

Autonotifications are sent automatically when someone updates a task, project, or chat. In the best-case scenario, these autonotifications can be batched, but usually your inbox gets swamped by minor updates to various channels. Is it really necessary to know that someone left a chat? Rarely.

When They Should’ve Messaged

If there is an important or time-sensitive issue that the team needs to see, an email-only approach can be a disaster. For these questions, even checking your email twice a day is not enough. You’ll miss the boat. What’s worse is that emails can get pushed down deep into the inbox, making it even more difficult to reply promptly.

These words may sound similar, but they have very different meanings.

Conscience and conscious sound very similar and are often misused. For example, you might have heard someone say that they have something “on their conscious” when they actually mean “on their conscience.”

Conscience is a moral sense of right and wrong: My conscience is telling me that I must confess to the crime.

Conscious means aware, alert, or awake: I was conscious of a change in the weather.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

It’s that time of year again. The days grow longer and the sunshine is determined to scorch. The parks fill up with children while picnics spread out in red and white gingham patches. The dog begs to go outside as we put away our heavy coats, hanging them neatly in closets. Long pants give way to shorts as coconut-scented oils fill the air with their perfume. It’s summer.

What phrases and books best evoke those fiery months? If someone bottled the essence of this golden growing season, what would it look like? It’s difficult to choose the best summer words, but let’s look at a few of our current contenders. Some are old, some are new, and some might surprise you.

Shakespeare: It’s impossible for me to think of summer without the Bard showing up. Sonnet 18, in addition to being the perfect love poem, encapsulates the summer months with unequaled, poetic grace. “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; / And every fair from fair sometime declines.” Could there be a better description of the summer sun as it pales in comparison to the author’s love? Shakespeare’s poetic brilliance reminds the reader to appreciate each golden day. “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Summer won’t last, so enjoy it now.

Dandelion Wine: Arguably Ray Bradbury’s most famous book, Dandelion Wine reflects the beauty of summer like a calm blue lake reflects the sky. With star-bright passages that shimmer off the page, it is impossible to read the novel without traveling back to the best summers of our youth. Bradbury’s masterpiece is crafted of short vignettes, all centered on the Spaulding family and their summer rituals. Do yourself a favor and make it your own yearly ritual. Read it during those first June days, or in July, and you’ll be well equipped for the months to follow. “Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Nora Roberts: Roberts’ volumes fly off the bookstore shelves and seem to fit the profile of perfect summer reading material. The engaging plots, interesting characters, and heavy romance can quickly tick away the hot hours of July. And Roberts is no stranger to writing about summer. She whipped this one up, and it’s spot on: “There was nothing like a Saturday – unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.”

Tuck Everlasting: Summer is a wonderful time to reacquaint yourself with those beautiful books from your childhood. Natalie Babbitt’s tale of immortality and the dangers it poses offers this sparkling gem about summer: “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

Passages that reference the summer season dot the literary landscape like wildflowers. The warmer months are a time of complex joys and freedoms, mixed in with sweat and hotdogs. Some of the greatest writers have tried to snare that magic onto a page. Henry James captured it most simply: “Summer afternoon – Summer afternoon… the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Can you think of a better way to sing the praises of summer? Share in the comments.

English Words from Around the World

The vocabulary of modern English owes a lot of its richness to borrowing words from other languages, but it borrows from some languages much more than others. We have only one word of Finnish origin in common use, but it’s a good one. Sauna, a direct import from Finland, pulls double-duty as our word for a relaxing steam bath and as the perfect way to describe gloriously hot, humid summer days. Here are some other great words with international origins:

Orange

Which came first: the color or the fruit? In English, believe it or not, it was the fruit. The word first appeared in English at the end of the fourteenth century, around the time the fruit was making its way into western Europe. Like so many other words, orange entered English by way of French, but the roots of the word stretch back to the Dravidian languages of southern India. It took another 150 years or so after the first introduction of orange for it to become the word for the color, too. Before then, the English-speaking world had to make do with saying yellow-red or red-yellow. Ever wonder why we call someone with orange hair a redhead? If orange had come along earlier, perhaps today we would call them “orangeheads” instead. Well, maybe not . . .

Disaster

Students of Latin or Greek can probably decipher the original meaning of disaster by looking at its roots: dis- (negative, bad, not) and astrum (star). Long ago, it was commonly believed that the position of stars and planets directly affected our daily lives here on earth. So a sudden calamity or misfortune was often blamed on the influence of a “bad star.”

Zombie

We can thank the folklore of Haiti and the West Indies for contributing one of the most terrifying and popular creatures in the modern horror genre: the zombie. But the origins of zombie may not have been so scary. The word can be traced back to West Africa, and possibly derives from a Kongo word meaning “god.”

Ketchup

Ketchup wasn’t always a tomato-based condiment. Once upon a time, mushrooms were the main ingredient. In fact ketchup isn’t always even ketchup. If you live in the southern United States, you may spell it catsup. The etymology is murky, but the word seems to descend from a word meaning “pickled fish brine” in the Amoy dialect of southeast China. The word may have made its way into English after entering Malay as kēchap.

Algebra

The prefix al- offers a clue about the origins of this word. Like alchemy, alcohol, alcove, and almanac, algebra is a descendant of Arabic (al is the definite article in Arabic, like the in English). Algebra is a combination of al- and jabr, meaning “the restoration of broken parts.” Algebra appeared occasionally in Middle English as a medical word, specifically in relation to fractured bones, but this meaning was quickly overtaken by the mathematical one.

What interesting word origin stories do you know? Let us know in the comment section or via our Facebook or Twitter feeds.

According to our Facebook friends, learning grammar in school is important

It seems that people not only care about using grammar, but also about using it correctly. 

(Photo source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/104421575/notebook-dear-people-of-the-world)

On Monday, we ran an informal poll on our Facebook page. After a recent article in the Huffington post discussing an increased demand for grammar study in education, we asked our followers: “Do you think studying grammar in school is important?” The results were unsurprising, but overwhelmingly one-sided. Of the three options (Yes, No, and No opinion), 98.6% of voters said that grammar study was important.

Naturally, we understand that our Facebook community is not a representative sample of the population. Many people who “like” our Facebook page and who saw the poll are interested in English grammar and therefore are more likely to think that studying it is important. What is interesting is how overwhelmingly people seemed to agree that grammar study in school is valuable.

What do you think, should grammar be taught more in schools?

5 Tips On How to Choose Your Blog Name

Guest post by Yohana Petrovic

So, you’ve decided to start your own blog! But before you can start writing and engaging with your readers, there is one hurdle that you have to jump: giving your blog a name. Choosing the best title for your blog is a very tricky thing.

Your blog’s name is its first claim to fame. As a starting blogger, your blog’s name is the make-or-break, the read or no-read, the click or no-click. It needs to be intriguing enough to compel an average browser to visit and start reading your posts.

To help you out, here are five tips on how you can come up with an attention-grabbing, click-begetting, and follower-attracting blog title:

 

1. What is your blog about?

Your blog name has two jobs. The first is to catch the reader’s attention, and the second is to tell your readers what they are in for when they visit your blog. Take note that it is an and situation and not an either/or situation. Your blog name should be able to do both of these jobs. If your blog is about cooking, then your blog title shouldn’t sound like it’s about shopping.

Next steps: Think about what your blog is going to be about. Will it be a travel blog? Are you going to talk about your carpentry projects? Will you be showing your readers different sewing techniques? Will you be cooking a different recipe every day? Will your blog be about your normal daily life? Once you’re clear on what your blog will be about, then you’re halfway to coming up with your blog name.

 

2. Make the Thesaurus your best friend

Wordplay is such a wonderful thing. You can use fancy words to describe simple concepts, or even make up your own words by splitting and condensing two or three words together. Sure, you can use generic and well-known words in your blog name, but it’s either already being done or it’s boring. Besides, where is the fun in naming a blog about solo traveling “The Solo Traveler?”

Next steps: Once you’ve determined what your blog is about, you can start listing all the words associated to it. Grab your Thesaurus (or, you know, Google synonyms) and try playing around with how certain relevant words sound together.

 

3. Decide on the tone of your blog

Tone is important; it is how you will “talk” in your blog. Your tone will determine what kind audience you will attract. This is why it is important to consider your blog’s tone when coming up with your blog name. For example, you would expect a blog entitled “The Fat Kid Inside” to be fun and informal. You wouldn’t expect the same from a blog with the title “Employee Incentives News.”

Next steps:  Consider how you talk. Is that how you’re planning to write on your blog? Consider your target audience. Are they the type who would appreciate a formal tone or an informal tone? Your blog title should reflect your tone to avoid confusion.

 

4. Research other blogs

Whatever blog you are thinking about starting, there is another one (or two or three or one hundred) that has already been published with a similar theme or topic. Embark on blog title market research. Remember, it is always good practice to learn more about what your potential audience finds relatable so you can name your blog accordingly.

Next steps: Check out blogs that are similar to what you want to do. Categorize them as successful or unsuccessful based on readership or followers. Then, compare the titles of the successful blogs versus the unsuccessful blogs. Try to see if there are similar aspects in the groups. Add the successful elements to your blog title and avoid the unsuccessful ones.

 

5. Memorability is a huge factor

Your blog name can be formal, informal, witty, funny, literary, or whatever you want it to be. The bottom line is that it should be memorable. You may have the wittiest, most beautiful blog title but if it is too complicated, or the letters don’t quite look right when placed together in a URL, then you are going to have a problem.

Next steps:  Once you have (semi-) decided on your blog name, write it together in small letters. Try to see if there are undesirable, shady, or unrelated words that would leap up when they are placed in a URL. You might need the help of someone else who is not involved in your creation process.

 

Best of luck! Share your favorite blog titles in the comments.

 

About the Author

Yohana Petrovic is a writer and blogger. She has 10 years of experience in education, and now she is a proofreader at http://globalessays.org. You can reach her on Facebook: Yohana Petrovic or on Twitter: @YohanaPetrovic