Page 21 - Abacoa Community News - January '23

Abacoa, Page 21
Book Review

The Painted Word: A Treasure sometimes hilarious words. word capturing the similarity between the hardened
Chest Of Remarkable Words Not unlike Wordcatcher (my mucus in the nostrils and a burnt wick. And consider
this more vivid than you would like: ‘snotter-clout’, an
earlier book), this volume
And Their Origins reflects my unswerving unfortunately vivid word for a hanky. ‘Phlug’ is a sterling
belief in the need to unroll example of a word that sounds and even looks like the
By Nils A. Shapiro the scroll of language, from thing it means, although we may never actually want to
To say that the author spindle to spindle, so we use it. “Hey, honey, can you pluck that phlug out of your
of this month’s subject can learn to say what we belly button?” may be technically correct but is certainly
volume “has a way with really mean and mean what romantically incorrect. Companion words include ‘snot’,
words” (pun intended) is the we really say. Not out of mucus from the nose, from the old Middle English ‘snotte’,
understatement of the year! what the proteanly talented which is intimately related to snout. Also, a word that has
By the time The Painted David Foster Wallace called bedeviled me for years, the very snotty word ‘booger’,
Word was published in ‘snootitude,’ his nose-in- possibly from the French ‘bouger’, to move.”
2012, Phil Cousineau – the-air description of ‘extreme usage fanatics.’ But out Now, if you are the philomath I think – and hope – you
a writer, photographer, of a desire to be alert to what travel writer Tim Cahill are, you will boogie on down to your nearest bookstore,
filmmaker, editor and calls the ‘callouses’ that grow over our words if we use or go online, and enjoy your own copy of The Painted
teacher – had written to the same ones over and over again.” Word. Just think how impressed your friends will be when
excellent reviews 36 books, all of them dealing in one Arranged alphabetically, the hundreds of words – some they note all the newfangled words in your vocabulary.
way or another with the subject of words: myths, poems, handsomely illustrated with artwork by Gregg Chadwick
songs, chants, sports lingo, ancient to modern languages, – include both the recognizable and the many you may
and so on. Typical of the reviews was this one: well wish to learn how to sprinkle into your own future
“If The Painted Word were a club act, I’d sit there correspondence. Here is a small sampling:
drinking in Cousineau’s revelations, tales and mythologies Aloof; Biscuit; Book; Caprice; Chiaroscuro; Chutzpah;
until they kicked me out of the joint.” Deadbeat; Dromomania; Honorificabilitudinitatibus;
So it was no small surprise to me that, as an inveterate Horripilation; Inkling; Kit and Caboodle; Kitsch;
lover of words myself, when casually browsing through Knuckle Under; Kvetch; Loophole; Malaprop; Maunder;
the shelves of a local bookstore I came across this Millihelen; Mojo; Okay; Omphaloskepsis; Onomatopoeia;
intriguing title and cover design and yet failed to Oxymoron; Palindrome; Philomath; Phlug; Plucky;
recognize the name of so prolific an author. Fortunately Prevaricate; Quintessential; Ramify; Riffraff; Sackbut;
for me – and for those of you who share my passion for Schmear; Scruple; Sesquipedalian; Skulduggery; Tout;
the beauty and fun of words for their own sake – I took Tsmesis; Twitterati; Umbrage; Up to Scratch; Voluptuous;
the book home and it has turned out to be an absolute Wanton; Wordpecker; Xenoglossia; Zoolite.
treasure that I am delighted to share with you. What makes learning so much fun throughout is
This 400-page paperback presents hundreds of words the author’s sense of humor, as the following entry –
– some of which will be familiar to you, many of which admittedly, one of the less serious among the hundreds
will be completely new – and in each case explains its included – demonstrates:
meaning and origin … in the process taking you on a “Phlug. Belly-button lint. Now tell me you’ve
journey always illuminating and often side-splitting. never wondered what to call it. File this one under
The following paragraph from the author’s lively ‘whatchamacallits’, that vast category of indescribables,
introduction offers a very solid reason for the usefulness unmentionables, or just plain word gaps in the language
of this book: – all those words waiting, like long-buried treasure, to be
“The Painted Word is another collection of strange rediscovered, or at least to help us with our stammering.
and marvelous, rare and recently coined, curious and Comparably icky names would be ‘snot’, from the old

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