A misunderstanding of the word ‘
synecdoche’ got me very excited this week. I thought I was going to be able to use it as the beginning of my blog. I’ve only ever seen Charlie Kauffman and Stephen Fry use it in actual sentences up until now, which was pretty good company to be in. Unfortunately, when I looked it up, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, it did not mean what it was that I thought that it meant.
I was trying to find the word or phrase that defines a sentence which proves its own point. The example I was going use was “I can’t make up my mind if I’m indecisive or not.” The closest I can get to a label for such a statement is a
Liar’s Paradox. It’s not quite that but its close (‘this statement is false’ of course being the ultimate Liars Paradox.)
I get excited when I get to use words that aren’t necessarily the norm. I guess this makes me a bit of a lexicon loser but so be it. I find vocabulary exhilarating. Some of it may be to do with the unwarranted superiority complex I sometimes get. Being in ‘the know’ when others are reaching for the dictionary kind of turns me on.
An Irish comedian called
Michael Mee used to quip about telling knock knock jokes to Bedouins. This didn’t always work because a lot of people didn’t know what a Bedouin is. I used to get a warm sense of smugness as I laughed know I was just that little bit cleverer than the rest of the room.
Obviously the title of this blog isn’t an actual legitimate word but there is a great sense of satisfaction in crafting new words which have a clear meaning. Vocabularic is another favourite made up term of mine which I use to describe my worditude.
It’s not the world’s greatest superpower in fairness. It’s never helped attract the girls or rescue someone from a burning building. But it puts a smile on my face and my geekiest ambition is to one day coin a phrase that enters the Oxford English Dictionary.
Thanks for reading my words.
Did you see what I did
there?
