2012-03-30 - Word

Oh shit, I’ve only written one thing in March. My legion of fans will be so mad. Well let’s at least make it two and it still counts even if it’s the penultimate day of the month. Actually that makes a good topic, let’s have a talk about cool words.

Penultimate – The second to last. The reason I like this word is because it sounds really complicated for meaning something rather simple and generally less interesting than it sounds. I’ve heard it a lot when listening to races; the announcer will say the car is nearing the penultimate corner. Now ultimate sounds very important and pen certainly doesn’t sound like something that would detract from that, but wait it means only the second last corner. That’s not that important, yeah it’s almost the last corner but not quite which seems like it shouldn’t sound so cool. Maybe it should be semiultimate, protoultimate or something, though then we’d lose a really cool word.

Defenestration - Throwing something/someone out the window. I like this word because it’s really specific about what it means. Most words can be used in several situations or a wide group of situations but defenestration only has one specific situation. The cool thing though is when that situation arises and you hear or read someone else describing that situation with that word or better yet you get to use it yourself. It’s like you’re a member of the international Defenestration club and you’re talking in a secret code to other members of this amazing underground society. You’re the bomb squad of words and your expertises are needed.

Defecation - Alright, this is taking a poo. Now I know that might seem a bit childish to you but I like it because it’s a very technical name for something simple. I love it when things are described with words that are not only interesting sounding but also way more complicated than they need to be. You could say it simply but you put the time in to say it the complex route and I respect that. Now there’s a certain amount of self-awareness required for that. You can’t just say big words to sound smart because then you’re a dink. You have to be using them to be weird knowing full well it would be better to use a simpler word

Decimate - To remove one tenth of. Now this word is a bit complicated because it also has the alternate meanings of almost entirely wiping something out, and leaving only one tenth of something. The reason I like it is the juxtaposition of those two meanings. People commonly use it to mean the later definitions and the way the word sounds more or less fits with those detentions, it does sound rather destructive, but with the former meaning it sounds rather lame. If you remove one tenth of something you are still leaving 90 percent of it around which isn’t all that destructive. If you decimate an apple it sounds like you are doing something horrible to it but then you still have the majority of an apple left over.

I think that’s enough for now, we’ll talk about juxtaposition some other time.