rickety, rickets, onomatopoeic. ABC No Rio.The organization took ownership of building that year, but it was deemed too rickety to survive.Credit...

The graffiti-covered courtyard of ABC No Rio at 156 Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side, in 2006. The organization took ownership of building that year, but it was deemed too rickety to survive.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

"No Rio" is a phrase that may refer to ABC No Rio, an art-making center that was intended to be a community-oriented alternative to the art world and gallery scene. The name was originally "Abogado Con Notario," which is Spanish for "lawyer and notary public". However, only the letters "Ab C No rio" remained. 

Mr. Englander in his office in ABC No Rio’s Rivington Street building in 2006.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

The chosen words are mostly regional, often monosyllabic, and frequently richly onomatopoeic: the natural poetry of the heterogeneous English-speaking tongue. 

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Beyond the clearly imitative words, like the onomatopoeic “boom,” “poof” and “gong,” Blount zeroes in on the expressive words that “somehow sensuously evoke the essence of the word: ‘queasy’ or ‘rickety’ or ‘zest’ or ‘sluggish’ or ‘vim,’ ”he writes.

onomatopoeic

Pronunciation: /ˌɒnə(ʊ)matəˈpiːɪk/ 

Definition of onomatopoeic in English:

形]擬声[擬音](

adjective

Using or relating to onomatopoeia:onomatopoeic words like ‘bang’ and ‘coo’

rickety

Pronunciation: /ˈrɪkɪti/

Translate rickety | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

adjective

• 1(of a structure or piece of equipment) poorly made and likely to collapse:we went carefully up the rickety stairs figurativea rickety banking system

• 2affected by rickets: poverty was evident in undernourished faces or rickety legs

Derivatives

ricketiness

noun

Origin:

late 17th century: from rickets + -y¹

rickets

Pronunciation: /ˈrɪkɪts/

Translate rickets | into German | into Italian

noun

[mass noun treated as singular or plural] Medicine[名][U]《病理学》くる病, 骨軟化症.

• a disease of children caused by vitamin D deficiency, characterized by imperfect calcification, softening, and distortion of the bones typically resulting in bow legs.

Origin:

mid 17th century: perhaps an alteration of Greek rhakhitis (see rachitis)