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Festooned

A festoon is a festive ornament. So to be “festooned” means to be decorated in festive ornaments. A festoon used to be a specific kind of ornament, in which flowers, foliage, and fruit were fastened to and suspended by long ribbons. It has now come to mean any type of celebratory ornamentation.

Considering how our calendar year is full of St. Patrick’s days, Mardi Gras’es, Independence Days, Christmases, pride days, gay pride parades, drag shows — not to mention all the days we just feel like dressing up — and so on, you’d think this word would be used more. And the waiters at TGI Friday’s are festooned with pride buttons all year-round.

Be careful who you say it to, though. There is a lot of festoon prejudice out there.

Posted 12 November 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Pretentious ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Supernumerary

If I met the man who invented this word, I would give him a kiss and then suck his balls dry. And I’m not even remotely gay. If the inventor is actually a woman things could get messy and we might even spawn a whole new strain of venereal disease.

Every single time I see the word “supernumerary” it makes me smile. It is six megasyllables of perfection with that lovely echoed “oo” sound. All it means is “too many” or “more than normal” or just “extra”. But it sounds so much cooler than that! And there is no supernumerary amount of times you can use the word “supernumerary”. I’m going to start prescribing intentionally-low numbers to everything just so I can say “supernumerary” when the outcome produces more than expected.

After buying new floor mats for my car: “Alright! The cashier gave me a supernumerary dollar!”

During coitus: “You have some supernumerary hairs on your butt.”

During a sonogram: “Hmmm, looks like you have a supernumerary child in there. I’ll get my tongs.”

At a nerd bar: “It’s Supernumerary Tuesday.”

Apparently supernumerary was originally a noun, actually describing a person. See the Wikipedia entry for explanation.

Posted 10 November 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Best Sounding ‡ Comments (1) °

Flex

I love the word “flex” because I repurposed it.

For years I have been plagued with a problem: I have several good friends who used to be lovers. But when referring to them, it always felt wrong to call them “ex-girlfriends”. The implication of the term is that this is a person with whom you have little contact. What I needed was a word that could be defined as

former lover, present friend

And so “flex” was born. I have written it into the Urban Dictionary (go here to vote it up in the ranks).

I have also defined “flex” with a few prefixes:

  • ex-flex: A former lover who then became a friend, but who is presently neither.
  • sex-flex: A former lover, present friend, who one occasionally has sex with.
  • best flex: One’s favorite former lover, present friend.
  • boyflex: Former male lover, present male friend.
  • girlflex: Former female lover, present female friend.
Posted 16 September 2009 † Christopher § Made Up/Repurposed § Neologisms ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Aubergine

I hate “aubergine” when it’s used to describe an eggplant. But I love it when it’s used to describe a color! Vegetables, to me, are not royal. They are humble, and should be spoken of with humble words, such as eggplant. Peasants eat eggplants. And we are all peasants.

But color, on the other hand, is very special, and defining specific colors is so challenging. It’s a shame, in fact, that all the basic colors have such basic names. “Red” is an abomination.

The more obscure the color, though, the more interesting its name becomes. Aubergine the color is purple, but darker, with a dash of brown or gray. Doesn’t such a rare mixture deserve a lovely name?

Posted 16 September 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Best Sounding ‡ Comments (0) °

Coterie

The French know how to party, or possibly how to enslave people. If you ever wanted solid evidence look at the following words, all from French or Old French:

  • escort
  • entourage
  • attendants
  • retinue
  • cortege

A coterie is a “group of people who associates with one frequently”, and is my favorite, although “cortege” nearly meets it for Most Pompous Word Ever. All these words have something in common, in that if you have any of these things, you’re probably a badass. In fact, I’ve ordered the list above from least to most-badass. If you show up to a party with an escort, that’s cool. If you show up with an entourage, that’s cooler, but only badass aristocrats and kings show up with attendants, retinues, corteges, and coteries.

On a side note, did you know there’s an adjectival form of retinue? “Retinued”, describing a person with a body of attendants. I wish I didn’t know that, because now I realize that I am not adequately retinued.

Posted 15 September 2009 † Christopher § Nouns § Pretentious ‡ Comments (0) °

Chyme

“Chyme” is cool in two directions. First is its spelling and pronunciation. “Chyme” is pronounced like “kime”. The hard “K” sound of “ch” is fucking cool. To pronounce that “ch” like “K” makes it sound serious. This is a word not to be fucked with. Same goes for “cholera” and “chable char”. The hard “ch” is the new “X” in “xtreme“. Anything you use it in becomes more legitimate.

Second is the use of a “Y” as a vowel. As I’ve mentioned before, we love the Y. As children we always heard that sometimes Y is a vowel, but we couldn’t think of many words that used Y as a vowel, except lame ones like “my” or “shy”. I suppose teachers didn’t want to tell us about “chyme” because it’s so super gross (see below).

Third is the silent “E” on the end. Like the hard sounding “ch”, a silent E at the end gives its word an air of legitimacy. When a word ends with a silent E, you know the person isn’t joking around. “Old” is old, but “olde” is REALLY FACKIN’ OLD.

Finally, and most importantly, the meaning of “chyme”. My favorite definition is from the American Heritage Dictionary:

The thick semifluid mass of partly digested food that is passed from the stomach to the duodenum.

There’s also this, from Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary:

The semifluid, homogeneous, creamy or gruel-like material produced by action of the gastric juice on ingested food and discharged through the pylorus into the duodenum.

EW! For whatever reason, partially-digested food is so much grosser than fully-digested food. We can handle a little poo, but chyme is beyond gross. It’s SEMI-LIQUID. And that’s not even an object. It’s not even a thing. It’s just creamy, milky CHYME. There is nothing grosser in the universe.

Posted 07 May 2009 † Christopher § Best Sounding § Medical § Nouns § Powerful Meaning ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Bass (The Sound and the Fish)

By a simple shift in pronunciation, from the AH to the AY, you get a wild shift in meaning. “Bass” the sound (or the instrument) sounds like what it is; and “bass” the fish is such a simple-sounding word, how could it be anything but a fish? And because the meanings are so different, it’s almost impossible to construct a sentence where the intended meaning is unclear.

I could still hear the bass through the wall. And I could not sleep. Curse my neighbor’s noisy bass! I would wait until morning, when my neighbor left for work. I would take a hammer and destroy the bass. Upon returning that afternoon, he would see his beloved bass in pieces on the floor.

In English, that kind of precision is rare.

The two words are actually a congruence of two different language traditions. “Bass” the sound is from the Late Latin “bassus” while “bass” the fish is from Proto-Indo-European, by way of Old English.

Posted 28 April 2009 † Christopher § Double-Meaning § Nouns ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Soggy, Loathsome, and Detestable

Individually, these words are nothing special. But combined in this way, they are a powerful force. Loathsome and detestable have similar meanings, but this expression is describing something SO loathsome and SO detestable that you must double up.

As if being loathsome and detestable aren’t bad enough, this thing is also soggy. Being moist is good, being wet is better, but being soggy is just gross. So this expression describes something that is both gross and EXTREMELY offensive. So extreme it’s obscene. So extreme it’s xtreme.

Everyone should attempt to write or say “soggy, loathsome, and detestable” at least once a day. For you texting addicts, SLD is the preferred abbreviation.

Posted 24 April 2009 † Christopher § Expressions § Powerful Meaning ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Sinecure

“Sinecure” comes from the Latin phrase beneficium sine cura which is an archaic designation for a person holding a title within a church, and paid under that title, but without any actual duties. In some governments, sinecures are intentionally filled as patronage or to allow a designate to hold multiple offices while only fulfilling the duties of one.

For the rest of us not applying for the job of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead or Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a sinecure can be any job or position in which one is paid a salary but which there is little actual responsibility.

As an amateur artist and musician myself, a sinecure represents the ultimate goal in financial sustainability. But sinecures are rarely positions one can seek with intention. It’s something one falls into by chance. For example, one might apply to an office job that turns out to have little actual responsibility, and one can then repurpose his time to work on his own projects while drawing a salary for his stated meaningless title.

Posted 22 April 2009 † Christopher § Nouns § Usefulness ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Raw

“Raw” is the rawest word I know. “Raw” is intense. For a word with no hard sounds, it still sounds hardcore.

Its origins are no less astonishing, with connections to Latin, Greek, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European, Old Norse, Old Irish, Sanskrit, and Slavic. The need to describe bloody, exposed and uncooked flesh goes back to the dawn of languages and possibly the dawn of civilization. With the invention of fire came the invention of cooked meat, and therefore a need to describe the uncooked variety.

Saying “raw” with a low, guttural “AUGH” makes me feel connected to my caveman roots. It makes me want to fuck somebody in this primeval way; to fuck somebody raw.

Posted 20 April 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Best Sounding § Cool Etymology § Sex § Sounds like its meaning ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

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