“Whatsoever things are lovely, . . . think on these things.
”Philippians 4:8
A Word On Words
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor
Dallas, TX75230
“A raid on the inarticulate.”
This is what the word merchant T. S. Eliot called each new writing venture—a raid on the inarticulate.
Articulation is defined in the dictionary as what modern humans, in the broad genus of primate mammals, do in giving utterance or expression to meaningfully arranged ideas. To articulate is to put into words. A word is reason or sense articulated in such a way as to communicate with others.
Human beings are nothing if not word makers. We have been called Homo sapiens—man, the knower, Homo erectus—man, the upright, and Homo faber—man, the fabricator. A not inappropriate designation might be Homo verbum—the word maker or man, the talker.
Words are immeasurably fascinating to me.
Some people are charmed by music, some by colors, some by antiques, some by clocks, some by stars, some by numbers, some by gravity, some by pi, some by cars. Then some of us are charmed by words. Among my heroes are those wordsmiths like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes, and Malcolm Muggeridge. All of them played words like Johann Sebastian Bach played the organ, to send cold chills up and down your back and leave you trembling like an aspen leaf.
There are “good words” by which we communicate our take on the current state of affairs in general, reporting on recent developments that we deem to be of some interest to the friend who has asked, “What’s the good word?”
There are nonsensical words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and Rumpelstiltskin that come along now and then, catching our attention and lodging a while in our collective consciousness; but they hardly ever carry any permanent meaning.
Many a concerned parent has admonished a beloved son or daughter going off to work, to college, or to war, “Remember who you are.” Knowing that they can’t be expected to come home again, the parents bid them farewell with the hope that long years of teaching and training, of guidance and discipline, of worry and love may have been so instilled in the offspring that they will not mess up their lives by foolishly forgetting who they really are.
I especially like the Hispanic words, vaya con Dios, sometimes seen on roadside signs. Go with God. Vaya con Dios. A happy thought, amigo.
Then there are final words, benedictions, which are literally good (bene) words (dictions) with which to conclude a prayer, a meeting, or a farewell, so that a group can be uniquely united in spirit as they take leave of present company and go their separate ways. Remembering that the early Christians, after the Lord’s Supper had been instituted, sang a hymn and went out, we used to do likewise, always singing, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”
When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
What really sets me to thinking along these lines, however, was not quite as sober as some of these matters just touched on.
A couple of days ago, for no good reason, I started jotting down some strange, even bizarre, words which came to mind, which words have found lodging in our vocabularies even though they are not necessarily Webster-approved: lickety-split, spizzarinktum, diddlysquat, persnickety, and a lot more with which I need not try your patience. (I am astounded at how often my little mind turns to such inconsequential things.)
Licketysplit has special connotations for me because a smart man I once knew chose that name for his car repair establishment. An aesthetically challenged place if you ever saw one, on a back road in Questa some ten to twelve miles down the mountain from Red River, New Mexico. The Licketysplit became a sort of second home for my old 1946 army Jeep. It seemed to be drawn to the place like a moth to a flame. As I suppose everybody knows, licketyksplit means plenty pronto. For this particular place, this was a world-class misnomer. It might more accurately have been named Manana Motor Messups—but that is another story.
Spizzarinktum, is a splendid word I never once heard used by Dr. A.J. Armstrong, the head of the English Department at Baylor University when I was in school there. Still, it is a word with a lot of character. Spizzarinktum is the substance inside a kid that makes him sass his daddy, jump fences, play hooky, or get sent to the principal’s office. Those who are full of spizzarinktum are full of vinegar and red pepper sauce, if you know what I mean.
Diddlysquat is a marvelous word. Its connotations are mildly pejorative, negative, ascerbic. If a body just doesn’t know diddlysquat about a subject, you can just put it in your pipe and smoke it that he is plumb ignorant of the matter.
A thingamajig is some contraption that may have a name that you just can’t think of at the moment, or it may actually not even have a name. It is generally a jerry-rigged device considerably more like the old Rube Goldberg inventions of the funny papers than a simple pair of pliers or a three-cornered file or a ball peen hammer. Just ask for it by name when you go to the hardware store. Good luck.
Persnickety is a nice word. It has a rather precise meaning. For instance, the IRS people can be quite persnickety if they feel you have shortchanged them a tad with a mistake in your addition or subtraction in your annual submission of the forms related to the affirmation of your citizenship in our great country. And your spouse can be downright persnickety when company is coming and you still haven’t cleaned off your desk. Need I go on?
Suffice it to say that without words humans would be the most pitiful creatures in all of God’s creation.
But with them we can exult with Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
How in infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god!
