Words, Words, Words

I learned a new word today.

I love learning new words, particularly when they’re multi-syllabic and fun to say.

Today’s word was “concatenation.” Both multi-syllabic and fun (and defined as a series of interconnected things or events). Evidently, listening to NPR does make you smarter.

It reminded me of some of my favorite words of the past and my adventures in using them. Like when I worked my hardest to get the 18-month-old, highly verbal son of friends to start saying “caterpillar,” “hippopotamus,” and “hobbledehoy.”

I discovered the last one on an evening during college when my friend Bekka and I were either bored or determined to waste time, and rather than doing it sitting in our distinct dorm rooms and chatting with each other on AOL Instant Messenger (where we would sign off with threads of text that said things like, “Farewell, Gorgeous.” “No, you’re gorgeous.” “No YOU’RE gorgeous.” “No, you—”…if you ever needed proof that college students are like preschoolers, I’ve got plenty of stories for you), we were hanging out in my room and exploring the dictionary.

One of the things I regret about our digital age is the loss of the codex dictionary. While I adore being able to type a word into Google and have the precise Merriam-Webster definition pop up immediately, I miss seeing all the other words on the page—that was where the fun lay. For on the same spread as “longitudinal” in my dictionary are words like “loofah” and “lollipop.” I can’t look up “summa cum laude” without seeing “Sumerian” and “sumac.” Natural curiosity leads me to read more definitions on the page than I went there to find, and in the process I learn new things—words, concepts, history, connections.

Anyway, Bekka and I sat on the floor and thumbed through the dictionary and found fun words, and when we happened upon “hobbledehoy” we knew we’d found a keeper. Its origin unknown, but dating from 1540, the term means, “an awkward, gawky youth.” We were sophomores in college, surrounded by 19-year-old boys. It was a descriptive-term-to-situation match made in heaven.

I’ve used the word any chance I can ever since, including trying to introduce it to every toddler I know. Perhaps, though, my favorite use of it I found when reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters. She describes the first meeting of Molly and Roger this way:

To Molly, who was not finely discriminative in her glances at the stranger this first night, he simply appeared “heavy-looking, clumsy,” and “a person she was sure she should never get on with.” He certainly did not seem to care much what impression he made upon his mother’s visitor. He was at that age when young men admire a formed beauty more than a face with any amount of future capability of loveliness, and when they are morbidly conscious of the difficulty of finding subjects of conversation in talking to girls in a state of feminine hobbledehoyhood.

That right there? I don’t think I shall ever be able to top it.

Speaking of fun words, I want this book.