When
I went looking for
Sir Reverence...
My Aunt Jemima is great fun. More than fun, she is an enigma. Once
upon a time, when I was a kid and believed that 'infatuation' was an
exotic disease, 'unpredictable' was a portentous sounding grown-up word
and 'ramshackle' was a synonym for Mom's sewing machine, I thought
enigma was a virulent disease slowly killing my favourite Aunt Jemima.
I remember spending sleepless nights wondering why Dad was so mean as
to let his sibling die without doing something about her enigma.
This however, is not about my enigmatic Aunt Jemima, who I discovered
later wasn't in the least bit anaemic. On the contrary, she was a
fun-loving hooperdo who wouldn't conform to her parent's mouldy way of
thinking and who with irrepressible glee often ventured into places and
events that no sane adult would even deign to.
At the grand old age of 68 and bubbling with an added zest for life,
she still remains an enigma, and subscribes to the belief that benign
neglect is the best form of care. She inebriates her roses with a
frowned upon beverage and watches them grow corpulent with neglect. But
that is another story.
This in case you are wondering, is about my head-on collision with
juvenile malapropism as a precocious miss-know-all and the subsequent
discovery of Blackford Oaks' distinctive dictum. To the uninitiated Oaks
is William F. Buckley's secret agent hero, and Buckley is to the
American West coast Republicans, what the Kennedys are to the East coast
Democrats.
More significantly, this is also about my desperate need to determine
the true meaning of 'Sir Reverence'.
I can't quite remember where I'd come across that word. But for the
life of me couldn't figure out what it meant. Not at that time. Dad, who
made me learn ten new words every time I malaproped and said the wrong
word at the wrong place (and believe me that was quite often) asked me
not to be impertinent. I figured he did not know it either.
My literature teacher, who considered Shakespeare to be
'Elvis-the-king-wordwise' and who made me sit through 10 boring pages of
Thackeray's 'Esmond' as an indelible lesson on effrontery, said that my
vocabulary was getting incondite by the day and I was fast turning into
a balatron. I didn't dare ask her what incondite meant. Or balatron for
that matter.
Theroux, who'd earlier made me spend over 48 hours in the library
hunting for the meaning of gynaikoponarian (woman beater) didn't offer
any solutions either.
But my hunt for the real meaning of these two innocuous words took me
on a wacky and weirdly wonderful roller coaster ride that had me
literally shrieking "Woweeee.... there's a whole new world of words out
there."
A whole new world of words that were neoteric, exhilarating,
esoteric, obscure, enigmatic, baffling, cryptic, mysterious, paradoxical
and even obsolete. Words that were beautiful, meaningful, exciting,
refreshing and exhilarating, and could so enrich our prosaic, pedestrian
and bromidically blah vocabulary that borders almost on the hackneyed.
Words begging to be brought out, used and savoured...
The power of neologism! I am reminded of 'Sir Reverence' (a harmless
four letter word that rhymes with art) and my foray into the world of
obscure words as I ruminate on how to enunciate the 1185-letter 'acetylseryltyrosylseryllsoleucyl........
a cryptic word of scientific pertinence, that describes the protein part
of the tobacco mosaic virus (whatever that is).
I finally settle for 'Acetyletcetera', and hunt for my Commonplace
Book for a re-scrutiny of the many alien and exotic words that I have
harvested with much glee during my many forays into the world of
obscure, hardly used word, and that now festoon the once pristine pages.
Some of the words that continue to fascinate me, perhaps because of
their persevering relevance include:
Kakistocracy - government by the worst citizens. No comment
Ponophobia - fear of overworking. The bulk of our public servants.
Furfuraceous - covered with dandruff. May be more useful for the head
and shoulders or dandax guys.
Schadenfreude - enjoyment of others' misfortune. No comment.
Quoz - something ridiculous or absurd. Certain policy matters.
Putschist - one who participates in a popular uprising. Not us.
Ptochogony - a system of producing beggars or poverty. The current
economy.
Tycolysis - accident prevention. Something for both motorist and the
traffic police to think about.
Steatopygia - having too much fat in the buttocks. Initially it was
my Somali girl-pal. It could also be anyone from the adipose clan,
trying to burn fat on the campaign trail.
Peudologist - a liar. All politicians.
Xenomania - a mania for foreign customs, traditions, manners. Colombo
society's pretentious lot.
Swelp - A perennial complainer.
Urbicolous - living in the city. Which is getting crowded.
Supervacaneous - needlessly added. Aren't many of the so deemed
'important' addenda.
Viaticum -State expense account. Heavily slashed these days.
Psephology - the study of elections. A new PhD perhaps?
Wegotism - excessive use of the editorial 'we'.
'Nuff said. Big words, said Alexander Theroux, are used not to
obfuscate, but clarify. I didn't much agree with him when it comes to
gynaikoponarian. But Sir Reverence... I'm sure glad you came my way.
-Hana Ibrahim
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