First published in Column 8 in the 1990s, specific date unknown at the moment...
By the way, I hope no reader of this
column is Hippistic, ie, has a philistine's resentment towards curiosity about
words. They won't enjoy what follows.
Let's begin with body words: did you
realise that a sciapodous person is unwise to have podobromhidrosis? Or that
the philtrum on your face is found below the vomer? And that the feeling you
get before sneezing has now been defined as, wait for it, antishoopation.
Are you a person unable to cope? You're
in a state of copelessness. However, if you merely put your foot in your mouth
at every point, you suffer from dontopedalogy. I have a friend who's a glot,
and she knows it! (In fact it's becoming feaseless for her to keep hoarding
everything.)
How's this for cliche mode? At this
point in time, many of my columns sit on the back burner, biting the bullet and
cognizant of a future interfacing in meaningful dialogue with the private
sector, and though I try to reinvent the wheel within the context of their
two-way street, the underutilization of viability visibly moves me; my
obligational limitation towards them is painfully obvious, yet to do a number
on them is like nailing jelly to a wall.
Did you know that gutters, furniture, ears, widows, tails and rivers don't necessarily have anything to do with streets, houses, faces, husbands, dogs and banks? They do, however, have plenty to do with some versions of the thing you're holding in your hand.**
If your hotel room was numbered 14A,
and you couldn't find a room 13, someone would be guilty of cledonism.
Cledonism, (and that's an example of epibole), is similar to the use of escape
words. Gosh! is it? And did you know we could all be lipogrammatics merely by
counting to 1000?
Fed up with saying the same things
about your sozzled friends? Try some of these: his elevator's stalled; lit up
like a kite; mug blotto; needing a reef taken in; is fishy about the gills; is
hicksius-doccius; is half-sober; is a drunkulet; slurks; has a guest in the
attic.... Benjamin Franklin described the state of inebriation as making
"indentures with one's legs." The noise some sloshed people make is
akin to P G Wodehouse's description of a pig eating: "making a plobby,
wofflesome sound."
But enough of the fairly ripped. How
about some new-style (or long-forgotten) insults? A clinchpoop or a clodpoll, a
fustilugs or a quakebuttock, a lobscouse or a yazzihamper, a skipkennel or a
tatterdemalion.
And here are three bindles. First, Gore might need to reconsider its name. I see that gore means a small, irregular
piece of land that can't be fitted into a township. So the township's name is a
paradox - a township that's a small, irregular piece of land that can't be
fitted into a township. What?
Second, one of the prime duties of this
father is to carry, at all times, an extra muckender. Just in case someone has
the follow-up to antishoopation.
And third, how are mountains formed?
By orogeny, of course.
Lastly, wordmakers over the last couple
of decades have tried to improve he/she and other personal pronouns. Here are
some fizzers: co, cos, coself; e and lr (!); et; hesh, hirm, hizer and wan or
wen (as in policewan or firewen); jhe (pronounced gee); per; thon. Good grief.
For Mr, Mrs and Ms we could have one abbreviation, Pn - pronounced, of course,
"Person." And to ameliorate the much maligned mother-in-law, how
about kin-mother, our-ma, or motherette? (Sounds like that one would spend all
her time doing the family's washing.)
Hmmm, after this quisquillous
collection, I think I'd better absquatulate out of here and become
circumforaneous.
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*Midweek: the weekly free newspaper in which Column 8 used to be published
** The printed newspaper, in other words.
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