Word Games, Posted by Maureen Lang

I think I’ve been in love with words since I was a child. I once aspired to read through the dictionary in its entirety, but never made it all the way through, at least not consecutively—I often just read randomly to enjoy words I’d never heard before.

This past week, my husband heard a commercial on the television that used the word “ginormous.” It’s the holiday season, and evidently the advertised sale was so big neither gigantic nor enormous would suffice to describe it, so they used “ginormous.”

His first reaction was to laugh at the made-up feel of the word. But when I mentioned I’d heard ginormous had officially been added to the English dictionary, he said, “That’s stupidiculous.” Meaning, of course, neither stupid nor ridiculous could quite define his opinion of such an addition.

So all weekend he was making up new words. When I complained about having cleaned up something for the umpteenth time he offered his support by saying “Now that’s frusappointing.” Meaning he saw my frustration and disappointment that the same task had to be done again (cleaning up after our disabled son because there was little hope of the task being removed from our list of regular duties). Thanks for smiling me out of it, honey.

When asked about something he didn’t have much of an opinion on, he said he had total lackapathy about it. Starting to get used to his new form of language, I guessed he meant lackadaisical plus apathy.

It’s been a fun game, reminding me of how we began a more traditional game of speaking pig latin several years ago. That one was so successful even our dog understands it! Another game we played was to give each other strikes if we used a cliche. That one lasted for years.

For a teacher and a writer, word games are something we both enjoy. I guess that’s part of the reason we’re soul mates.

What about you? Do you like word games? Want to play the latest? As an avid reader, are you curious about the game? That might make you scrutinious. Scrutiny plus curious. Do you like languages, and grammar? Perhaps that makes you a grammaquist: grammarian plus linguist.

Have some fun and try making up your own new word. It’s unbelastically fun (unbelievably fantastic). No real rules or scorekeeping, just combine two words to make up a new one. Have fun!