Meeting a Word

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Well, if you’re a word freak like us, you know there’s nothing, nothing like that moment when you meet a word for the very first time.

You know that little frisson when you first encounter a word?

Well, there was a word like that that caught me up short the other day.

And that word was eucaligon.

That’s U-C-A-L-E-G-O-N, eucaligon.

And, Grant, it means a neighbor whose house is on fire.

I know that. I learned that from Will Shortz.

Yes, and it’s a reference to a character in the Iliad.

And you won’t find it in many modern dictionaries today, or any modern dictionaries.

But it has been floating around in the past in at least a couple of them.

And Will told us that he encountered it in a crossword puzzle.

Yeah, those crossword people are about too clever for me.

I came across a word like that recently.

There was a discussion about what it takes to break through writer’s block.

You’re like me, right, Martha?

Sometimes you’ve got to do stuff on deadline and the words won’t come.

Oh, yeah.

So one guy was claiming he’s like you should just force yourself to write and then the dam will break and all this genius will come pouring out, right?

And then another guy was saying he’s saying that you have to have cacowithis scribendi.

Right.

I know that word.

Of course you do.

Kakoethes Skribendi, C-A-C-O-E-T-H-E-S-S-C-R-I-B-E-N-D-I.

And it translates as the irresistible urge to write.

Yes.

Even to the point of evilness, even to the point of detriment, right?

Right.

So as you know, because you’re the Greek expert in here,

I’m actually nearly literally preaching to the choir, aren’t I?

I’m going to tell you, Martha, the Greek origins of the Kakoethes.

But I love the way you say it.

Is that okay?

It’s great, yeah.

Okay.

It comes from Greek words meaning bad disposition, kakos, and ethos, right?

And so what this fellow in this discussion forum was saying,

He said that you either had the drive to write or you didn’t.

And if you didn’t, you might as well go weed the garden instead.

So kakowethi skribendi, that’s the word that I found.

It’s a phrase, actually, so it’s not one word.

Yeah, two words.

Two words.

But, yeah, that irresistible urge, that itch, that burning itch.

And you know what, Grant? Actually, there’s cacoethes loquindi as well.

That’s right.

The irresistible urge to talk, right?

And if you have that, you know where to call, 1-877-929-9673.

We talk about words like that here.

That’s 1-877-929-WORD.

And we welcome your emails anytime, day or night, from anywhere in the world, words@waywordradio.org.