16/7/99

Quaquaversally Speaking...

I'd like to share a few words with you about my editors.

    I know a man in London who collects airline barf bags (unused, of course). In France, tyrosemiophiles collect cheese-box labels. My hobby is odd words.
    I've got them arranged under such headings as "Word Words" (gammacism: difficulty in pronouncing guttural consonants; epeolatry: the worship of words), "Sex" (ranging from melcryptovestimentaphilia: fondness for women's black underwear, to sam: a phallus-shaped Egyptian amulet used to foster erotic relationships), and "Things You Didn't Know Had A Word For It" (bluma: the metal tag attached to meat certifying it is kosher; ullage: the empty space in a bottle).
    I might as well be collecting barf bags. Every time I use one of my favorite words, one editor or another summons me and says, "What's it mean?" The only one I'm allowed to use is "sam," but out of context. Now and then I've managed to slip in the little word "ate," but never as a noun. If ever I do, you'll know I'm referring to blind impulse, reckless ambition or excessive folly that drives one to ruin.
    It would be ate to impose sesquipedalia (long words) on a newspaper, because the last thing we need is a wordsmith who knows words. If I described Pnina Rosenbloom as a mugwump (an independent politician), or Ariel Sharon as fundilexic (someone whose name begins with a letter from N to Z), I would surely be misunderstood and we'd get sued for defamation of character.
    Take a headline such as "Palestinians protest by shutting shops at site of bloodshed." Heck, I could have said all that in four words, "Palestinian aceldama at hartal," and saved a lot of space. 
    In America, I could make a fortune as a specialist, providing baragouin (unintelligible language) to lexiphanics (people who use pretentious words). What D.C. speechwriter wouldn't give half his salary for a term like "Clinton's clinomania" (an excessive desire to stay in bed), or "Dukakis kakistocracy" (government by the worst of people). Dolichopodous Dole actually only refers to him having big feet, but no one would vote for someone thus described.
    In Israel, there is no such market. Can you just see some glib opponent of Meridor getting up in Knesset and mocking his meridarchy (partial rule of a part of an empire)? Everyone knows Barak is sinistrorse (left-leaning), but even the most dextrorse of Likudniks wouldn't call him that.
    You could say that some struthious (ostrich-like) editors have a mind like a tappen. (You could say that, but I couldn't. I'd get fired. A tappen is a bear's rectum plug, which closes during hibernation.) They're stuck on simple words, just because they're so comprehensible.
    Take, for example, the evergreen subject of secular-haredi relations. Day after day, those same words. But go try substituting a snazzy synonym for the faithless former -- like, say, minifidians -- and you'd be accused of iotacism (excessive use of the letter I); instead of using the distinctly non-English "haredi" to describe the jubate (fringed with long-hanging hairs) of Mea Shearim, we could use a perfectly acceptable English word like misoneist (a reactionary hater of anything new) to bename those pistic (pertaining to faith or trust rather than reason) energumens (fanatical devotees).

IT'S LIKE I said to my ternate (produced in threes) kids during supper the other day (they are very good at dinner-table conversation, which, of course, makes them deipnosophists).
    "I've been thinking..."
    "Aw, Daddy, not another of your dithyrambs!"
    "No, this won't be a wild, emotional outpouring, just a thought. Something in this morning's paper. Some haruspex --"
    "-- c'mon, we're eating! You have to talk about a Roman entrails inspector?"
    "I'm talking about its other meaning, a public-opinion pollster. Anyway, he said that, by the time you girls complete propaideia and continue on to high school, Jerusalem will be unlivable for us minifidians. I'm wondering if maybe we should move to a city less, y'know, dystopic."
    "Jerusalem, wretched? But we love this city!"
    "Your urbacity is touching, but excessive or foolish pride for your city is not sensible. We'll have stones raining down on us from lapidating Arabs on one side, lapidating haredim on the other."
    "So? We'll shield ourselves with a scutiform. We're not leaving and that's that."
     "We could, y'know, uh, like, er --"
    "Daddy! Cut the embolalia and speak chrysostomatically. And pass the salt. You want to move to Tel Aviv, right?"
    "An orarian lifestyle wouldn't be so bad. Dwelling there, by the seashore. I wouldn't even mind a place by the river."
    "Huh. I never imagined you an amnicolist."
    "It's better than nullibiety, because pretty soon, this city's gonna be nowheresville. More decoction, anyone?"
    "What?"
    "Soup. More soup?"
    "Yuck. I took an antejentacular sip this morning --"
    "You had some before breakfast?"
    "Yeah, and I almost upchucked."
    "Child! Your language!"
    "Sorry. Anyway, you can't live in Tel Aviv, because they all live in big apartment buildings, and, well, you have this problem..."
    "Who told you about that?!"
    "What's-his-name, ach, he's the whatchamacallit next door."
    "You've got to do something about that lethologica."
    "He told me you're a closet cryptoscopophilia."
    "So? I like looking into windows of homes I pass. What of it?"
    "You're absolutely circumforaneous, wandering house to house, like a  mailman. Daddy, you're a peeping Tom!"
    "Am not!"
    "Are too!"
    "Don't you raise your voice in that tolutiloquent way, young lady!"
    "Sorry. It's just that ... it's so maddening, the way you go off in all directions at once.
    "Huh. It's the first time anyone's ever called me quaquaversal."

I'M BASICALLY misunderstood, and not just at work. Every time I step outside beyond the breastsummer (the beam supporting the front of a building), I know I'm going to come across some monoglot (a unilingual person) who doesn't comprehend simple, sententious (expressing much in few words) English.
    Heck, Israelis can't even use their own language without resorting to pasimology (speaking with one's hands) or chironomy (the art of gesticulating).
    I just have to open my oral cavity (mouth) and I see those blank stares. Like the time I tried to smooth-talk an Israeli woman (motek) who lives next door.
    I nictitated (winked).
    She bopped me in the glabella (the space between the eyebrows).
    I should have given up right there, but I was in love. She was flavicomous, callipygian and bathykolpian (blonde, with shapely buttocks and large breasts), utterly huggable (evancalous).
    She said she didn't go in for syndyasmian relationships (one-night stands), so I snatched her shoelaces and asked her to marry me, which she dismissed as mere gamomania (insanity characterized by an odd or extravagant proposal of marriage).
    Anyway, it turns out she's ecdemolagnic (tending to be more lustful when away from home).
    I think she started warming to me when the conversation became more phatic (expressing feelings rather than ideas), but eventually she had to excuse herself when it turned out she was a ucalegon (a neighbor whose house is on fire). I never saw her again.

"SAM," MY editor barked, and I thought he was calling for a phallus-shaped amulet, but no, it was me he wanted.
    "Look," he said, "I admire your attempt at adoxography (writing cleverly on a trivial subject), but -- maybe I'm a mumpsimus (one who refuses to correct an error, habit or practice even though it has been shown to be wrong) -- I still think you should stick to simple words. We have enough philodoxes (one who loves his own opinion) at this newspaper, and frankly, you come across as a bit of a pedaleur (a gushing, smarmy type who irritates those he's trying to impress)."
    I was aphasic (lost for words). "Me?!"
    "Everyone says so."
    "Oh yeah? Well, they're all cacodoxic (of the wrong opinion)," I blurted.
    He scoffed at the antanagoge (a counter-charge made in retort to an adversary's accusation). "I agree with them. No more sesquipedalia. No more icosagrams (a word having 20 letters). From now on, you're being limited to words of no more than 12 letters in length."
     "Thirteen," I countered compromisingly.
    "No!" he yelped. "Not that!"
    I snickered. "A tad triskaidekophobic (fearful of the number 13), aren't we?"
    "Ever since I was a kid," he whimpered.
    I had to concede defeat. He was, after all, the diaskeuast (editor).
    "Dumb down," he said. "Keep it simple. This is a newspaper."
    "So, that's your final word on the subject," I grumped.
    "It's my final word, and my final syllable of a word (ultima)," he said with apparent finality.
    Without further cunctation (ado), I absquatulated (skedaddled).
    "Have a nice day," he called after me.
    I had no idea what he meant by that.