Discombobulate and Blustrification

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, my name is John Freeman. I’m calling from Asheville, North Carolina.

Hi, John.

Hi, John.

How are you doing?

I’m doing well. I’ve always, I don’t know, been a little thrown off by the word discombobulated, and I was wondering exactly, like, where it came from, how it came about.

Discombobulated by the word discombobulated.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, and it’s one of several words that arose during a period of great linguistic exuberance in this country in the 1830s. There was a fashion for making up silly words like discombobulate and gosh-bustified, which means really happy, or blustrification, which is what might happen before you get discombobulated.

Absquatulate, which means to leave in a hurry.

Right, right, after your blustrification, which is partying and that kind of thing.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

So they were intentionally making these words that sounded fancy, but they were all artificial.

Right, right. Sort of trying to sound Latinate, but not really.

And the original apparently was discombobricate.

Oh, okay. Discombobricate.

Yeah.

So if I’m doing well and everything is fine, then would I say I am convobulated?

I think you should. You won’t find a whole lot of examples of that in dictionaries or anything like that.

And it’s not really a natural formation, right, Grant?

I mean, it’s not something that you would naturally use.

Although, you know what? If you ever fly into Milwaukee, there’s a sign after you go through security that says recombobulation area.

Yeah, we talked about that like in 2008.

Yeah, yeah. It was just kind of a joke that they used in the airport to sort of put travelers at ease.

Right.

The opposite of discombobulate is recombobulate.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

All right.

All right, John.

Well, here’s to you being completely combobulated at all times.

Very good.

I hope to stay combobulated today, or if I get discombobulated, hopefully I will re-combobulate myself.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

If language has you discombobulated, this is the place to re-combobulate.

877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.