Paratereseomaniac and Osculation in a Cryptic Personals Ad

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Andrea calling from Port Angeles, Washington.

Hello, Andrea. What’s going on?

I have a singles ad that I cut out of a newspaper about 12 years ago, and I’m looking, I’m trying to figure out what the guy is looking for.

In fact, yeah, I forgot that I had the ad, and it wasn’t until I changed wallets a couple weeks ago that I re-found the ad.

And now you guys exist to help me answer my question.

So the ad was so good that you saved it. This must be some ad.

Well, the word that I don’t know reaches across the entire width of the column, which is how it caught my eye.

Can you read the ad to us?

Sure. It says, single blonde, blue-eyed, South Town male, 25, seeking female paraterraceomaniac with extensive knowledge of oscillation.

Of oscillation?

Yes.

Oscillation?

Well, oscillation, I know what that one means. I looked that one up.

How do you spell that?

O-S-C-U-L-A-T-I-O-N.

Oh, osculation. Okay, sorry, osculation.

Yeah, and what does osculation mean?

That has to do with kissing.

Right.

So he’s coming off as a typical singles ad guy when he’s looking for that.

Except for that one big $25 word.

Yes. Wow.

Okay, do you want me to spell that one?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, it’s P-A-R-A-T-E-R-E-S-E-O-M-A-N-I-A-C.

So he’s looking for a parateresio maniac with extensive knowledge of osculation.

Yeah. Wow. Now, why didn’t you just answer the ad?

I have no idea why I didn’t answer. I mean, wouldn’t that be worth the cost of a bad date, you know?

We could track him down. Southtown what city?

This would have been in Buffalo, New York.

So what do you think the word means?

You know what the Buffalo market was like. Were there other guys looking?

I mean, there might have been other guys looking for the same thing but using different words.

Well, you know, when I broke it down with the prefixes, I know of, like, paralegals.

So it’s like someone who has a little bit of knowledge of the legal system or, you know, like, not as much as a lawyer.

But then the T-E-R-E part, I have no idea what kind of prefix that might be.

Andrea, I can tell you what it means.

I’m so happy.

You know, those books that have a lot of really strange words in them, these collections of all these weird big words that you can impress people with?

Well, this word shows up in some of those books, parateresiomaniac or parateresiomania, from the Greek word meaning to watch closely.

And it’s usually defined as someone who is really crazy about seeing new sites.

Isn’t that great?

And so I thought, well, you know, that’s a really positive adjective.

But then I happened to see in a dictionary of psychological disorders that a parateriesiomaniac is a voyeur.

So I’m kind of thinking, I mean, I wonder about the poor guy who took out that ad because maybe he was trying to impress everybody with his wanderlust.

But anybody who’s familiar with that term as a psychological term might have run the other way.

Oh, wow.

Well, I never get to talk about this word, so it’s really thrilling for me to do so.

Well, I appreciate your help, but I finally have an answer.

After 15, how many years?

About 12 or 15, yeah.

Oh, wow. 12 or 15.

That’s a really long time not to change your wallet.

What do you have, like a George Costanza wallet, a really big fat one with stuff flowing out of it?

Andrea, thank you for a wonderful call.

Thank you for your help. I enjoy your show a lot.

Great. And let us know how that ad turns out. I’m really curious.

For sure.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Martha, you rock, lady.

Holy mackerel. That’s stupendous.

Thank you.

Any reason to bring your Greek dictionaries down off the shelf and you’re…

Happy woman.

I am. It did take me a long time, though, to figure that one out.

If you’ve got a longstanding question or a puzzle that you’ve been dying to find out the answer, actually better, if a word has been a burr under your saddle for 12 or 15 years, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or pop us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And if you need help writing a personals ad, we’ve got quite a vocabulary.