Words and More Words

As you all must know by now, I love language. I have this ongoing love affair with words, and I'm so enchanted by them that I don't even care what language they're expressed in. So here's my current slew of words and word-related interests:

1. Out-woman. Isn't that delicious? It means exactly what it says. It dates to the 16th century, I believe. Can't you just see two brazen hussies going at it outside some remote rural pub in the Cotswolds, one of them shouting to the other, "I can out-woman you any day!"

2. New words. Merriam-Webster is finally adding "edamame" to the dictionary; edamame are immature green soybeans, and many of us have been eating them for years. Also to come in the next edition: "soju," a Korean vodka distilled from rice, and "prosecco," a dry Italian sparkling wine.

3. The Adventure of English. History International is currently airing this 2002 series, and I've TiVoed every episode. I especially enjoyed the one in which the host credited America with standardizing the language, much to the admiration of the Brits. Who knew? I figured they always thought we were the ones who botched it up.

I keep a running list of my favorite words, and it's getting ridiculously long. Do you? If so, what are your favorite words?

A.J. Kiesling and 'Skizzer'

I read a lot of books. I don't mean a skimpy one per week or anything like that; double or triple that, and you're in my ballpark. I read both multi-genre fiction and multi-category nonfiction. I'm not only an avid book reader; I'm also a highly critical book editor and writing instructor. And I will say this without apology or qualification: The very last thing CBA (shorthand for the Christian book publishing industry) needs is another crummy or mediocre or wannabe writer. You have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince, or princess, among the mass of Christian writers.

One such evidence of CBA royalty is Angie Kiesling, who writes under the name A.J. Kiesling and is one of the best writers I've ever edited. She is also a friend, which makes me appear less than objective in my assessment of her writing skills. But before I launch into a glowing review of her first novel, Skizzer, let me assure you that our friendship grew in part out of a mutual respect for each other's writing skills. I wouldn't praise her book just because she's my friend; I wouldn't subject her or you or the publishing industry to that kind of deception.

Here's what I love about Angie's writing: She's a wordsmith through and through. After reading dozens and dozens of Christian novels so far this year, I am so utterly tired of lazy writing, which made Skizzer such a refreshing and
even recuperative read; I found myself breathing more deeply as I settled into a book that reminded me why I love the English language so much. Angie's word choice is always precise; her metaphors are always fresh; her descriptions are always visual. If you can't "see" the scenes in Skizzer, the problem is not with her writing.

Okay, enough about Angie. I'm guessing it would help if I told you a bit about the book. In Skizzer (the way one character pronounced "sister" as a toddler), protagonist Claire Trowling's sister, Becca, has disappeared, leaving only a few cryptic clues behind. Claire's quest to find her sister uncovers a long-held family secret and takes her from North Carolina to England, where the mystery behind an unusual pendant, the celebration of a sacred ritual and the reason for Becca's disappearance all come together. It's a compelling, suspenseful and ultimately satisfying read.

Reading Skizzer made me wonder why CBA editors don't demand this level of writing from more of their authors. Maybe the problem is that there are plenty of writers in love with stories but not enough in love with language and stories. Readers should be given both — a page-turner of a story and just the right words to tell it. Budding writers and veteran authors alike would do well to read Skizzer and learn from it.

You can buy the book here as well as in brick-and-mortar stores, and you can read a great interview with Angie here. I heartily recommend both.

Feeding My Inner Nerd

As if I don't get enough emails, I willingly receive Michael Quinion's always amusing and entertaining weekly newsletter, "World Wide Words." Every Saturday he regales me (okay, not just me—45,000 other subscribers as well) with fascinating tidbits about the words we use. Want to know what on earth the phrase "with bated breath" actually means? Quinion's your man.

Today's edition referenced the word, um, "referenciness." For reasons that should be obvious to any member of the Colbert Nation, when I saw that I had to keep reading. Turns out that Quinion and others spotted the word last week in a story in The Guardian questioning the credentials of a British TV personality who purports to be a nutritional authority. In the article Dr. Ben Oldacre wrote:

The scholarliness of her work is a thing to behold: she produces lengthy documents that have an air of "referenciness" ... but when you follow the numbers, and check the references, it's shocking how often they aren't what she claimed them to be.

Goldacre acknowledged that Stephen Colbert's signature word—truthiness—was indeed his inspiration in coining the word "referenciness."

I want to coin a word. I want to create a word so clever, so witty, and so useful that it will make it into our everyday lexicon. I want to be cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first person to ever use this unknown word I have yet to coin. And I promise, when I do coin this word, you will be the first to know.

This is how I feed my inner nerd, ingesting random facts about words. (Oh, and watching The Weather Channel. Can't forget that.) Anyway, if you've come up with a great word but don't want to admit you're a word nerd, will you let me have it? I will forever express my gratitudiness.

Declensions**, Anyone?

I took a quick trip to NYC over the weekend, and it proved to be uneventful travelwise—until the flight home. After our Continental pilot wished us a good morning at 2:45 p.m., he asked the first-class passengers not to conjugate* around the first-class galley.

Yes, I laughed out loud.

Things settled down for the rest of the flight, but then again my headphones drowned out anything else he might have said—until we began our ever-popular initial descent. That's when he thanked us for choosing Continental and wished us an enjoyable stay in Orlando, or "wherever your final destinations take you."

I hope my final destinations take me someplace enjoyable, that's for sure. May yours do the same.


* In case you need a refresher, this is something—not at all unpleasant, I might add—that you do to verbs. Okay, it also means "to couple." If first class was coupling around the galley, that may explain the pilot's brain lapses.

** This has to do with inflections of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives and can indeed be unpleasant.

This Is Great Stuff

Anyone know where I can find an online style guide that covers southern dialect? I've spent way too much time searching for one. Ah, but I've uncovered so many riches irrelevant to that particular quest! Who cares if the dialect in the novel I'm editing isn't just exactly so? I'm having a great time bookmarking all these cool language sites I've found! I know, I know—"cool" isn't the first word most people think of when it comes to language. But get this:

In its 17th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “plutoed” as the word of the year, in a run-off against "climate canary." To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when...[it] no longer met [the] definition of a planet.

Now, I knew about Pluto being demoted and all, but how I missed the verb "to pluto" is beyond me. I love it. Yes! It deserved the award. Here are some other contenders for word of the year:

* murse: man’s purse (yuck)
* climate canary: "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon"
* flog: a blog that flacks product (thumbs up on this one, down on the flog itself)
* YouTube: as a verb, to use the YouTube web site or to have a video of one’s self be posted on the site (eh; seems hard to use)
* macaca/macaca moment: an ethnic or racial gaffe caught on video (oh, yeah-I do like this one)
* boomeritis: afflictions or injuries of Baby Boomers, caused by their age (I can relate)

Oh, and in case you're wondering just who this "American Dialect Society" is, it's the august association that chose "truthiness" as the 2005 word of the year. Can't get much smarter than that.

Mea Culpa: Dampening Spirits

I’m guessing it was in December of 1973 that I covered a Christmas parade for The Asbury Park Press. As one of the newest reporters in the city newsroom, I pulled the lamest assignments, and on this day it was Belmar’s annual holiday procession. Having attended the Philadelphia New Year's Day Mummers Parade every year as a child, often in well-below-freezing temperatures, I truly hated parades. But I soldiered on and did my journalistic duty on this miserable, rainy day at the Jersey Shore. The story that ran in The Press the following day, however, assured our readers that the wet and cold weather didn’t “dampen the spirits” of either the spectators or the marchers. I thought I was being so creative by using that phrase, and maybe 33 years ago I was, but I doubt it. I suspect that even by 1973, that expression was already hackneyed.

So how come, over the past 33 years, this worn-out phrase has been used so often on the air and in print? I just heard it again on The Weather Channel, my default station when I need to feed my inner nerd. Am I to blame? Did I unwittingly resurrect a dying expression all those years ago? Maybe if I—and the 4,372 other reporters who assured the public that no spirits were dampened by foul weather that year—had hesitated a minute longer before filing our stories, the expression would have died a natural death in 1973, and we wouldn’t have been subjected to it for lo! these many years. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

This drives me nuts, and I really don’t need any more stimuli in that regard. What about you? What jaded phrases would you like to see expunged from the record?