Monica in Burlington, Vermont, says a friend recently told her that her day became kerfunkulated, and Monica knew what she meant without even asking. Why do we successfully infer the meaning of such words? Placeholder words such as thingamajiggy, doohickey,whatchamacallit, and dumaflache are vague terms that substitute for something else and serve a useful semantic function. If you can track down the book Vague Language by Joanna Channel (Internet Archive) it’s a useful resource on the effect of using such words and challenges the notion that it’s always desirable for one’s language to be precise. Another book along these lines is the collection of essays edited by linguist Joan Cutting called Vague Language Explored (Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
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