Words. Sweet, Beautiful, Delicious Words

• Posted on November 14, 2012November 14, 2012
• by Karen Fayeth
• 2 Comments

Tired, morose and limp from an already rough week at work, I found myself with a few minutes on my hands before the next meeting, so I idly visited my favorite idea site and took it for a spin.

It asked me: What was the last word you looked up, and why?

That got a furrowed brow from me as I struggled to think what word that would be. The proverbial light bulb went on over my head and I remembered likely the last word I looked up was still in the search field of my WordBook Dictionary app on my phone.

And so it was.

The word was avuncular. Meaning “1. resembling an uncle in kindness or indulgence; 2. being or related to an uncle.”

So there you have it.

Why did I look up that word? Because I was reading a book and came across the word and I had absolutely no idea what in the sam hell it meant, not even in context.

I like to think of myself and a pretty wordy person, a word nerd, in the vernacular.

I read a lot and I love the English language and all its quirks (American, British and all other forms of English included).

But for as much as I like to think of myself as a linguistic bad ass, sadly, I am not.

And so while reading whatever tome finds its way into my hands, I often have to turn to the dictionary app on my phone to look things up. Which is WAY better than having to slip out of bed, pull the dictionary off the shelf and look it up, as I used to do.

Ah the wonders of modern technology, eh? Creepy, yet good.

By the way, according to the app, today’s word of the day is: locoism. Meaning “1. A disease of livestock caused by locoweed poisoning.”

What a fitting word for my personal work related vida loca.

Well then, that was a nice break from the craptacular. But one must dive back into the morass as that’s how one earns a paycheck these days.

Image from King-Sheep.com