Pertaining to Long Words

My name is Tishabug, and I'm a wordaholic. 

I love words nearly as much as I love books. 

I love how words look, how they feel in my mouth, the power they hold to reveal or conceal, how, short or long, a single word can become a whole story in itself.   

  Over the years, I've picked up new and interesting words from signs, by listening, through reading (rather a lot), from daily word emails, and as co-captain of the Terre Haute North Vigo High School state championship SpellBowl team. (Why, yes, it is quite appropriate to bow.)  

I've even been known to make up a word or two in my time.

 I don't often, if ever, use most of the interesting words I've collected. As much as they delight me, I have also learned the  value of speaking plainly and clearly -- to eschew obfuscation of my oral intent via sesquipedalian declamations.  

A fancy words just isn't very useful if the person you're talking to isn't crystal clear on it's meaning and connotation.

So I continue to collect words in silence.  Some are big, some are simple, some delight me in their appropriateness, their puniness, or that just look, when written out, very much like or opposite from their meaning.  Sometime, I even look at word I've known for decades,  and find that truly looking at it on the written page, it seems all of a sudden alien.

One of my favorite words came my way from the book Crazy English, by  Richard Lederer:   

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian

This is certainly one of the most delightful words I've ever met.

First, it's impossible not to smile at the utter silliness of its pieces and parts. I can just see hippopotamuses (or is it hippopotami?) and monsters, quipping and skipping joyfully around a sundial. 

Second, speak it.  Say it out loud.  Feel it roll around your mouth like a month-old puppy let out on the fresh grass after a long afternoon in his crate.  It makes the mouth unabashedly happy.

Now, consider the appropriateness of its definition. It's an adjective meaning "pertaining to extremely long words." How perfect is a word that defines its very self!

Finally, consider all of these as you look at the word on the typed screen.  Notice how it starts all big and wide and round, and roly-poly, just as it sounds, proudly showing off its excessive width.  Then as it nears the end, it squishes tighter together, trying to make room for every last letter, holding its breath to fit those last letters in before it runs out of space.

Yes indeed, it's a Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian delight.

 Just thinking on this word is, in spite of myself, bringing a little up-curved grin to the side of my mouth.

But, for all that, I'm glad I never faced this word in SpellBowl competition. The sudden appearance of 150 imaginary quipping monsters and hippopotami (or is it -muses?) would surely have instigated an official challenge from our team nemesis, those unimaginative arch-rivals from Bloomington South.

Chaos Theory (parking meter variation)

From the Imaginary Dictionary in my head...

Chaos Theory: n.
Looking for order and sense in the day to day world of humans is like trying to dig enough coins out of the car to feed an unexpected parking meter.
The closer I get to the amount I need, the smaller the value of each piece I find, the nearer I get to discovering there just aren't enough "cents" to be had...

Imaginary Dictionary: Life

Words run around in my head. Real words, nonsense words, word-associations, meanings, unbidden, thoughtful, random strings of letters. I think of this as my Imaginary Dictionary.


Life (n):
Fragile, resilient, changing, constant,
painful, joyful, unexpected, devastating,
hopeful, surprising, lonely, friendful,
agonizing, wonderful, improbable life.
Everything can change in a moment, in a lifetime,
with the wind, by a phone call, from a smile.
Life is constant,ever-changing,
adapting, evolving, surviving.
Life is a person, a bug, a plant, a doe, a bird,
the lizard who lives in the garage, a child,
(But not a mosquito. I refuse to include mosquitos
in the dictionary in my head.)
Lifetime is measured in decades, minutes,
centuries, years, seconds, millennia:
A bad day, a perfect moment, a magical year,
a crappy week.
Life goes on. Life goes on.

Meet Tishabug

So. After years of writing in journals for no one but myself, and posting the occasional short blurb to facebook, I've finally built up some courage to put myself out there a little more, and start a blog. 

       The name, Flight of the Tishabug, comes from a childhood endearment that my parents dropped long ago, when I probably insisted I was far too old for such a babyish nickname.  Yet, in my head, the name has lived on in a parallel world, a world with it's own language, it's own reality.  In that world, I still think of myself as the wide-eyed, painfully shy little pig-tailed little wallflower called Tishabug.   Tishabug is the fly on the wall: listening, observing, taking it all in.  She's the industrious ant of Aesop's fable, planning ahead for the rainy day, yet living with the grasshopper who prefers to put playtime first. But she still tries to find time to fly for the pure joy of flight, to sing loud, off-key joyful noises.


      So come on along through the good and bad as she explores the world - the hope, the loneliness, the joys, the fears - share with me as Tishabug forges diligently onwards, with The Nellypup and B.H.E. (Best. Husband. Ever.) at her/my side.  I hope to write of the adventures we share, the world I observe, the paths of my ponderings, and the words that describe it all--even when those words exist only in the imaginary dictionary in my brain.