I Know a New Word

I like words OK, but I really love vocabulary. Having a precise word for a grand feeling, a quaint situation, or a complex thing excites me. I don’t need to be able to use it in everyday conversation or even ever use it as long as I know I’ve safely pinned it to a corkboard and splayed it’s wings a bit.

My favorite (internal) exclamation is “They’ve got a word for that?!”

Yesterday I came across a word I’d been collecting in picture and anecdotal form for some time. Though capturing the vapor is nice, distilling the essence is much much better. There had to be an arrangement of letters into a word for what I collected, but where do you turn a definition into the term–the dictionary just doesn’t work that way. So the great thing about stumbling onto the textual form was my complete ignorance in getting there. Sure, you’re in a magic castle and you unlock a strange chest you’re going to be amazed but not truly surprised. But if you’re cleaning out the front coat closet looking for an old pair of gloves and you dump over a shoebox full of rookie baseball cards you’re going to be shit-your-pants overjoyed. I typed this word as part of a larger string of words into a search box looking for references to a bit of art I’d found. I got pages of hits with this one word highlighted–wait what?–I clicked the best of the bunch and serendipity escorted me right to the definition.

I’m certain I read none of the page, but still knew what it said.

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