Historical February 1990 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
This was a fun Christmas! I got all kinds of neat presents (things that I like but don’t need like books and cigars and chocolate) and some o.k. presents (things that I don’t like but need like clothing).
One of the most intriguing presents was a book that was left somewhat anonymously on my porch.
The card that accompanied the book said, “To Tom, from the Famous Writers’ School!’ This puzzled me. I didn’t know that’ Famous or, for that matter, Dillard’s even had a Writers’ School!
The book is entitled Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual. Obscure, and Preposterous Words (University Books, published by Citadel Press). Wow!
Some people collect bottle openers, some people collect quilts, and some people collect dust (generally lethargic people). I collect clocks and words. You see, I have a plastic box on my desk containing hundreds of 3×5 vocabulary cards.
These are cards that I make when I read a word that I don’t know, and then I work on learning the word.
So right away I understood that this would be my kind of book. It’s not often that I use this lofty position as a columnist in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, St. Louis’ oldest and bestest neighborhood newspaper, to tout a product, but I’m doing so now. Rush out and immediately buy this book!
If you can use even some of the words it offers, your conversations will be reduced to rubble. You won’t spat with your spouse, carp with your co-workers, or be recusant with your relatives.
They won’t be upset with you, because they’ll never understand you. But, hey, as long as, you know what you’re saying, who cares if they understand you, right? I’ve always prided myself on my vocabulary (not wanting to be just another “pretty face”).
After all, my philosophy has always been why say something with a one or two syllable word that everyone can understand when you can use a three or four syllable word that has everyone scrambling for the dictionary!
With this bias, I’ve always tried to facilitate progress toward a solution rather than help solve problems; I view myself as an iconoclast rather than a rebel; timing is propitious, not just good; with my beard, I’m hirsute, not hairy; and I’d rather be the cynosure than the center of attention. I opened Mrs. Byrne’s book and my eyes lit up! Talk about obscure, these words make arcane seem commonplace! It’s laden with words that I’ve not seen or heard! Its chock full of words that would be foreign even to an avid Scrabble player! It’s brimming with words that are guaranteed to confuse, obfuscate, and puzzle! What more could one want???
Here are some of the real treasures that I selected randomly—honest—fromperusing the book (rather than just reading it): monstrum (n. a box for relics; a muster of soldiers); collywobbles (n. pain or looseness in the bowels); plouplou (n. an infantryman, French slang); cagamosis (n. an unhappy marriage); capric (adj. goatlike; coming from a goat); laaba (n. a storage platform high enough to be beyond the reach of animals); perichareia (n. excessive and violent rejoicing); gallmatias (n. gibberish; confused, meaningless jargon); sackbut (n. an ancestor of the trombone); periditation (n. exposing to danger); and tardigrade (adj. slow-moving or sluggish). Saying these words quickly is a bit like trying to recite the Rosetta stone, whether or not you even know Rosetta.
By trade I’m an educator. That means that I know how to help—oops, facilitate— learning! It’s easy: one simply copies what’s to be learned over and over and over until it’s memorized.
It worked for the monks in the Dark Ages, and I haven’t found anything better yet!
If it’s painful, it has to be good for you, right? So. to help you, the reader, and me, the writer, absorb those wonderful charms from Mrs. Byrnes book, I’ve decided to use all of them in one smoothly flowing cogent paragraph!
This paragraph, then, will be copied over and over and over by quill pen by quill pen by quill pen until it’s mastered until it’s mastered until it’s mastered.
Here goes and, oh yes, have fun copying and copying and copying!
One afternoon when school had been called because of snow, Johnny opened his monstrum and began to play with his plouplou. Johnny’s parents, Henrietta and Aesop, were in a cagamosis, so Johnny often resorted to fantasy games where he would pretend that the plouplou were in a state of periditation! Henrietta was actually very charming, but Aesop was, even on his good days, capric!
He had a grey goatee, often smelled, and loved to eat paper.
When he spoke, it was often gallmatias. Suddenly Johnny heard the sackbut. Henrietta was calling him to dinner.
He put away the plouplou in a desultory fashion and moved tardigrade toward the dining room.
As he came closer to the door, he could hear the dishes crashing amid laughter.
A perichareia was taking place before his very eyes! Aesop reared up (on his hind legs!) and fell against the laaba, knocking two custard pies and a gallon jar of tepid prune juice down to the floor. Johnny knew what was coming next, and he felt a sensation of collywobbles. Yes, he was going to have to clean all of the dining room floor! Alas, he was lucky that he has his plouplou to help! There, that wasn’t too hard, and I bet you didn’t even know that I went to law school! Next month: VOCABULARY QUIZ. How many of these words can you use in the same sentence with Dan Quayle?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February 1990.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Unusual vocabulary spellings checked against enlarged source. Some are deliberately comic or unusual; not silently replaced with modern synonyms.
Original source: SD_Times1990_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
