The new dictionary is out. Or rather, the codicils to the Merriam-Webster American dictionary have been officially released and I don’t want to sound like a dork or anything but since I don’t really hide it all that well anyway, what the hell, I love when Merriam-Webster appends their tome with additions. It makes me giddy to add even one word to my arsenal let alone fifteen or more at a time. If anyone ever wondered what to get me for a gift think huge, antique, hard cover dictionary (an 1828 first edition would be great, especially if it smells like a 180 year old book).
This year, thanks to popular culture, I can finally add frenemy and staycation as official words. There are others but these two are my favorites at the moment. Their irony of existence pulls at the very strings that attach my heart to my keyboard. Funny, of course MS Word does not yet recognize them, what with that little red squiggle underneath. Let me go ahead and fix that now. Right click, add to dictionary. Ah, that’s better. And I can do it without feeling as if I have added some made up word because they are not. They are real, Webster said so.
Okay truthfully they are made up, completely fabricated in fact but aren’t all words just something someone said once and it caught on? I wonder how many words were even in that originally printed version of the Merriam-Webster’s in 1828 as compared to today’s version. In the past half century alone I imagine the dictionary to have at least doubled due to all the rapidly changing technical terms out there, never mind all that stuff having to do with the Green movement and hip-hop.
Both of these newly contrived words that I love are catchy. Both of these words were flung into the annals of popular culture as meaningful. Both words are what happen when oxymorons get in on in the back seat of their father’s Caddy, while enjoying some Reggaeton, and then produce a love child. In this case, when they say opposites attract they are truly accurate.
Frenemy. A word birthed by the contrasting parents of friend and enemy. Its definition is when someone acts to be a friend although they are in truth an enemy. One might not understand how this word even came to be or what caused it to enter popular speech. Off the top I can remember a Sex and the City episode entitled “Frenemies”, looking it up the episode aired in 2000 but, according to the Wiki on this word, it may have been in print as early as 1959. Way to celebrate your golden birthday by being officially added to the dictionary, frenemy. Way to go!
Then there is staycation. This word, the bastard child of stay and vacation, is possibly the grandest of all oxymorons. When taken literally that is. I have taken plenty of vacations from jobs where I fully intended to do nothing more than enjoy a week at home catching up around the house making scrapbooks or other things I never have time to complete otherwise, its just that someone finally granted this activity with an official name. This one has apparently only been around for six years; just a babe in linguistic terms.
I suppose that attempting to play either of these words in Scrabble will be a challenge if I were to play with my Mom who is a stickler to the official Scrabble dictionary but by next year I could have my very own copy of the shiny new Merriam-Webster edition which shows them plainly in black and white; undisputable as real words to even the most hardened player. Worth fifteen points each in their pure format, I will surely do my best to ensure I land either of them on a triple word score. And hey, if frenemy comes in one fail swoop I get that bonus fifty. Now that’s a score worth vlogging about.
Showing posts with label scrabble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrabble. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Effort, The Voice, The Missing Pieces
Like Aerial in The Little Mermaid, I feel as if my voice has been literally pulled out of me. All of my words are seeming to fall short or are far to convoluted to complete a train of thought that anyone can follow other than me. In times like this I tend to turn inward, review myself and eventually everything comes spewing out in a matter of a couple days but it has been far longer and I can not wrap my head around anything because everything is up in the air and out of place.
Life will never be the fantasy world I want it to be because I am not the only one living it; true I am the only one living mine but with seven billion-ish people on the planet that is quite an array of outside influence in my choose-your-own-adventure story to make things turn in ways I never considered. This is not a scripted movie. At least I hope its not. Never in my life have I lived with regret and I do not intend to begin doing so now. I have to persevere and contemplate but make my choice for myself without looking forward or back. I can only do what is right for me and I can only live in the moment right now. Changing the details of the past or mapping out every aspect of the future is impossible.
My life is in flux in many ways right now and although it is all connected it makes me feel as if every wire has been pulled out of my personal circuit board and left exposed to create sparks separately. Individually they are basically harmless but blend all the sparks together and that will create a level of voltage that I have never quite faced before. Instead of dwelling in the drama that comes along with life’s currents I have made a conscious decision to cap off the ends of those wires and shove them back inside my brain as I throw the switch to kill the power.
At this moment I am going to shake it off completely, continue to load up on analogy but relate to nothing other than my own heart and mind. I will not speak of it anymore because I need to figure it out without the billions who live for themselves telling me how to live for me. Moments of fun seem far gone and I want to get them back.
In the spirit of that, here is a story to break the tension and perhaps help my mind relax back into its old comfortable place of goofiness. This is created completely from the 41 words on our Scrabble board and fifteen additional words so the story flows. Where I have added words they will be underlined. Enjoy!
Life will never be the fantasy world I want it to be because I am not the only one living it; true I am the only one living mine but with seven billion-ish people on the planet that is quite an array of outside influence in my choose-your-own-adventure story to make things turn in ways I never considered. This is not a scripted movie. At least I hope its not. Never in my life have I lived with regret and I do not intend to begin doing so now. I have to persevere and contemplate but make my choice for myself without looking forward or back. I can only do what is right for me and I can only live in the moment right now. Changing the details of the past or mapping out every aspect of the future is impossible.
My life is in flux in many ways right now and although it is all connected it makes me feel as if every wire has been pulled out of my personal circuit board and left exposed to create sparks separately. Individually they are basically harmless but blend all the sparks together and that will create a level of voltage that I have never quite faced before. Instead of dwelling in the drama that comes along with life’s currents I have made a conscious decision to cap off the ends of those wires and shove them back inside my brain as I throw the switch to kill the power.
At this moment I am going to shake it off completely, continue to load up on analogy but relate to nothing other than my own heart and mind. I will not speak of it anymore because I need to figure it out without the billions who live for themselves telling me how to live for me. Moments of fun seem far gone and I want to get them back.
In the spirit of that, here is a story to break the tension and perhaps help my mind relax back into its old comfortable place of goofiness. This is created completely from the 41 words on our Scrabble board and fifteen additional words so the story flows. Where I have added words they will be underlined. Enjoy!
Delay icy exit, or dote as chefs amp the crew with a dowel. Find the ream in a bin. Tug it down dazed, jot XI in ink on the keg. He gave no rune? Oy. The fib is flat as a rug or bib. Even a trio of grazers get whiny in the attic. Los squalos, la puma.
Squalos is not actually a word but I am sure we used it as if it were something in Spanish before acquiring a dictionary. Does any of it make sense? Not really but then that is what I feel for the world right now, this just brings me back to a simpler time and makes me feel like maybe there is still a fun loving and loved person trapped inside. Like a New York bagel; crunchy outside, all squishy and warm on the inside.
Squalos is not actually a word but I am sure we used it as if it were something in Spanish before acquiring a dictionary. Does any of it make sense? Not really but then that is what I feel for the world right now, this just brings me back to a simpler time and makes me feel like maybe there is still a fun loving and loved person trapped inside. Like a New York bagel; crunchy outside, all squishy and warm on the inside.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
There is No Slurring Allowed in Scrabble
Quick, list all the words you know that include the letters q, c and d. Not easy right? Welcome to the dilemma of the moment: how do I use letters to my best advantage, maximizing points, and kicking the butt of anyone willing to take me on? I grew up with Scrabble; my grandparents, mom and various other family members were seemingly addicted to it. I would try to create interesting words with my second grade vocabulary and sometimes I would even do alright. As I grew up words began to have an even deeper meaning for the writer trapped inside but a tiny three letter word seemed to hold more weight than working towards becoming that writer: fun.
When I was twenty three years old it was common to find me in the clubs every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as well as Sunday on some not so rare occasions. I paid my cover charge and extended an arm to receive the ink stamp that would take three days to scrub off. The motion was instinctual; I needed no prompting to remind me how it was done because I had done it a million times. As a club hopper many interesting, diverse and crazy people come in and out of your life because, at that moment, your worlds share so many common bonds: a love of being half deaf, drinking enough until everyone looks good with running mascara, cigarette burn holes in all your clothing and so much love for each other you have no other way of expressing it but to rub their back and hold their hair while they slump down beside the bathroom toilet, vomiting as they fall.
All those years in the club scene gave me some of my favorite Scrabble words; take, for example, excess. Land that one on a triple word score and you are sure to take the game. Not only are the letters worth fifteen points, it is an excellent word describing a state of mind. It is a word used to define what happens when drinks continue to flow down your throat regardless of the little voice that is attempting to scream 'knock it off you idiot or you are going to die from alcohol poisoning'. Instead of listening to the voice it is far easier to splash some whiskey in its face to shut it up and send it home crying. This is not a problem though, you won't remember having done it by the next morning and all you have to do is say sorry, that you will never do it again, and the little voice miraculously forgives you.
After so many nights of stale drinks, cigarettes and conversation, I reached my low when I woke up one morning to a person who I called a friend handing me a glass of water, two aspirin, a joint and the nose tube attached to an oxygen tank saying 'trust me, you are definitely going to need these'. I glanced around and realized I was in the bed of another friend who was nowhere to be found but the guy I was interested in was laying next to me fully clothed. I took it all and started to inhale, maybe a little too fast, and began to put together the pieces of what had happened the night before over a greasy breakfast of bacon, eggs, and a grilled bagel. Recalling even the smallest detail after my third Alabama Slammer is something I am still working on.
I learned my lesson after that night. That was the first and last time I have ever drank to an excess where I blacked out without cognizant memory of what happened. Scary. Not to say that I have not been drunk since then because there have been plenty of nights filled with Merlot or Cape Codders that should never be discussed but nights at the club are so few and far between these days that paying more than five dollars for a cover charge is shocking to me. Now I am much more likely to have a couple beers at home with Matt during a Friday night Scrabble game and call my sister to ask if she has a dictionary. I ask if she could please look up how to spell aqueduct because if I spelled it correctly I will have scored ninety points (forty for the placement and an additional fifty for using all seven letters, score!). I feel her rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me through the phone as she tells me it is spelled with an e and not an i, so I take my seven points for the simple word duct instead and go to bed with all memory of the eighty three points that could have been.
When I was twenty three years old it was common to find me in the clubs every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as well as Sunday on some not so rare occasions. I paid my cover charge and extended an arm to receive the ink stamp that would take three days to scrub off. The motion was instinctual; I needed no prompting to remind me how it was done because I had done it a million times. As a club hopper many interesting, diverse and crazy people come in and out of your life because, at that moment, your worlds share so many common bonds: a love of being half deaf, drinking enough until everyone looks good with running mascara, cigarette burn holes in all your clothing and so much love for each other you have no other way of expressing it but to rub their back and hold their hair while they slump down beside the bathroom toilet, vomiting as they fall.
All those years in the club scene gave me some of my favorite Scrabble words; take, for example, excess. Land that one on a triple word score and you are sure to take the game. Not only are the letters worth fifteen points, it is an excellent word describing a state of mind. It is a word used to define what happens when drinks continue to flow down your throat regardless of the little voice that is attempting to scream 'knock it off you idiot or you are going to die from alcohol poisoning'. Instead of listening to the voice it is far easier to splash some whiskey in its face to shut it up and send it home crying. This is not a problem though, you won't remember having done it by the next morning and all you have to do is say sorry, that you will never do it again, and the little voice miraculously forgives you.
After so many nights of stale drinks, cigarettes and conversation, I reached my low when I woke up one morning to a person who I called a friend handing me a glass of water, two aspirin, a joint and the nose tube attached to an oxygen tank saying 'trust me, you are definitely going to need these'. I glanced around and realized I was in the bed of another friend who was nowhere to be found but the guy I was interested in was laying next to me fully clothed. I took it all and started to inhale, maybe a little too fast, and began to put together the pieces of what had happened the night before over a greasy breakfast of bacon, eggs, and a grilled bagel. Recalling even the smallest detail after my third Alabama Slammer is something I am still working on.
I learned my lesson after that night. That was the first and last time I have ever drank to an excess where I blacked out without cognizant memory of what happened. Scary. Not to say that I have not been drunk since then because there have been plenty of nights filled with Merlot or Cape Codders that should never be discussed but nights at the club are so few and far between these days that paying more than five dollars for a cover charge is shocking to me. Now I am much more likely to have a couple beers at home with Matt during a Friday night Scrabble game and call my sister to ask if she has a dictionary. I ask if she could please look up how to spell aqueduct because if I spelled it correctly I will have scored ninety points (forty for the placement and an additional fifty for using all seven letters, score!). I feel her rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me through the phone as she tells me it is spelled with an e and not an i, so I take my seven points for the simple word duct instead and go to bed with all memory of the eighty three points that could have been.
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