Insegrevious

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark from the Scripps Ranch area of San Diego.

Mark, welcome!

Hiya, Mark.

Hi.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve got a word that I’ve wondered about for a long time.

The word is insegrevious.

Insegrevious?

Insegrevious.

How the heck are you spelling that?

Well, I have no idea.

I mean, I can guess, but, you know, I-N-S-E-G-R-I-E-V-O-U-S.

Wow, can you do that faster?

No.

Insegrievous.

And I’m not worried so much about whether it’s a real word, because I don’t care.

But the word comes from a guy named Gary Owens, who you may know.

Beautiful downtown Burbank.

Right, with the hand over his ear.

Right, or the voice of Space Ghost, or, you know, whatever.

Oh, yes, Space Ghost.

That’s right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He’s done a ton of that kind of stuff.

And he claims to have invented the word, and most of the world believes him.

And I heard him describe the word once a long time ago, and he described it as coming from a class of words whose meaning is malleable to the extent that it can mean two different things at the same time.

And an example would be if your boss says, what do you think of my report?

And you say, why, it’s insegrivious.

And he thinks you mean one thing and you think it means another.

And so my question is more about, first of all, does that class of words actually exist?

And if it does, what’s it called?

And if it doesn’t, should it?

There’s a problem with this word, Mark, first of all, is that it’s Gary’s word.

And so he’s taking, I guess, the privileged place of defining it any way he likes.

And I’ll tell you, he’s been using this word since the mid-60s.

I’ve seen it as far back as like 1965.

It’s always in connection to him.

It’s always his word.

He owns it.

Some other people have used it.

But in 1968, this is how he described the word.

And it’s a little different than what you just said.

So I suspect that he’s changed his story over the years.

Or I got it wrong.

I’m going to quote him, all right?

He said, insegrevious, and he spells it I-N-S-E-G-R-E-V-I-O-U-S.

Insegrevious is a freedom word.

You can use it any way you like, like a diplomat, for instance.

If somebody asks you what you think of your boss, you can say, he’s absolutely insegrevious.

The guy you’re talking to can think what he wants.

You can think what you want.

That’s like telling somebody after you’ve kept their kids for the afternoon, your kids were as good as they could be.

Exactly.

It’s exactly like that.

But the key here is he’s basically created a nonsense word, and that’s what nonsense words are.

They have the form of a word.

They can be pronounced and said aloud, and they can be spelled and written and typed and printed, but they actually don’t have a fixed meaning because they’re nonsense words.

I can’t think of any other word that’s like that where you could really, or a class of words where you could take it one of two ways and you could fake people out with it.

Well, it’s not one of two ways. It’s any way.

I think you’ve asked a very insegrevious question.

There we are.

It was a pleasure talking with you.

Thank you, Mark, so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you have a question for us, we’re waiting here insegreviously.

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Or you can email us at words@waywordradio.org.