I'm sure I wasn't the first to transpose the n, but I like it and I'm sticking to it. So there.
I have no good reason for using "acquainti" for the plural of "acquaintance" or "arrove" as the past tense of "arrive." But I do.
To wallow like a buffalo in a bad temper; to be indecisive; to wallow in bad-tempered
indecision.
Isn't it a great word? I was trying to think of "wallow" as "hippopotamus in
mud" and couldn't so I invented "buffle" as in "buffalo in mud." Then I remembered
"wallow" but I still like "buffle" better.
Hungry and lacking whatever spine keeps you from unhealthy, overpackaged, impulse food items.
My third-grade teacher was a living nightmare for me. Very early in the school
year, reading aloud, I came across the word "bird." I had been in
speech therapy since nursery school and only the summer before had experienced
a trauma to my jaw that would result in my near-inability to pronounce any vowel-r
combination, like "worst."
She made me repeat "bird" again and again until I cried, and then
she made me fetch Mrs. N., my beloved speech therapist, from down the hall,
and work with her in front of the whole class until I pronounced the
word correctly. Keep in mind that because of an actual physical trauma, I was
physically incapable of doing so. I hated her. (At recess, HPV and I would sing
"Mrs. P--- is a bullfrog" from whatever song that is that would wind
up in "The Big Chill.")
Anyway (see how useful a word that
is?), one day Mrs. P was displeased at how much I wanted to be me and not whatever
she was trying to mold me into. "You!" she exclaimed, "you
are as stubborn as a mule!" I had just finished a biography of Lincoln
that discussed how single-mindedly he pursued his education, walking uphill
(both ways) barefoot (in the snow) carrying his lunch. I was eight years old.
My vocabulary was newly primed, so I retorted, "No I'm not! I'm determined!"
I knew that "determined" was the same thing as "stubborn,"
only better. Unfortunately my spoken vocabulary didn't match my reading vocabulary
(it still doesn't), so what I uttered was "dedderminded." And I still
am.
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To get to the warehouse store we recently joined, we pass through what we call the gauntlet of Christianity, a minor connecting road between two higher-traffic roads with nothing on it but five different fundy-looking religious establishments. The most frightening thing about this road is not a) that it exists but b) that it exists so close to our home.
Hypocrism: I couldn't remember the word "hypocrisy" once and
invented "hypocrism" instead. Now I remember both at once and tend to gurgle
a short
laugh before I say "hypocrisy" in most circles or "hypocrism" with Haitch.
An incident of supposed magnanimity masking an intent of animosity. I invented
this word and, sadly, have yet had but one occasion
to use it.
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One speaks of an age's or a person's passing. Anything out of style
is passé. If one awaits something's going out of fashion, one
awaits its passéing. First use, 980930.
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The offspring of the ducks residing on Mirror Lake on the UConn campus, Storrs, CT. We were pretty sure that only mentally unbalanced waterfowl would live in that foul, stinking, murking run-off, and that their offspring must be backward.
It's a spot or patch of territory you claim for your own. If it's not at your house, it could be just Yours anyway, like the bit against the slopey rock on East Beach across from my dorm Holcomb, or under the little sapling outside the first Denver apartment, or under the one particular linden tree on the plaza outside Dot Org's previous building, or the one bit of grass on the concave side of the parapet enclosing the patio at the new building. At Formigny, the reading spatch is in the backyard in the shade of the neighbor's tree.
Stomp+trample: Usually you scuffle through fallen leaves, but when they're
raked in a pile that you then destroy, you stomple.
First use: 12 November 2003
Tedium, tedia. Neuter Latin plural of life's little tedious tasks and time-fillers.
Torpor:
1 : APATHY, DULLNESS
2 : a state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total insensibility
: extreme sluggishness or stagnation of function
Turpitude:
: inherent baseness : DEPRAVITY ; also : a base act
The latter word I learned from Bloom County.
The other day I wondered if I was projecting my inability to function after
10 p.m. on a friend. I was not: she too shuts down and longs for her bed.
Torpitude: the craven propensity to take too many naps or need to go to bed
earlier than normal people. First usage: 8 January 2004
"USAn" instead of "American" and "Murkan"
Is there an adjective no one's told me about that means "a citizen of the United States of America"? "American," as no one should need to be told, means someone who lives on either of two continents, which contain (last I checked) 22 countries, not only one. So I coined "USAn" while notetaking in POLS 201. I was smitten with my wit and have continued to use this, at least in my own writing.
Listen to a USAn who doesn't understand why the noun and adjective "American" is problematic (and I don't claim to have invented the one solution) pronounce "American" sometime. When it says "Buy American," it will often pronounce only two syllables, something like "Murkan." This adjective describes a whole mindset in addition to a nationality.
Murkans distrust anything furn too.
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Last modified 8 May 2003
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