Tuesday, February 24, 2004

 

So I was paging through my copy of PomPom, and thinking I'd do some Oulipo thing, like where you replace all the words in something with all the words seven words after them in the dictionary, but I kept coming up with words like "xanthoma." Don't get me wrong; xanthoma sounds great, but at the end of the day, even a beautiful word for a skin lesion affecting primarily the eyelids just sort of lays there for me, flopping pathetically like a fish.

Maybe I've just got to let it fester a bit. Ew. I did, however, while paging through the dictionary, learn the meaning of nympholepsy: an esctasy of emotion inspired by something unattainable.

"The most common disease to genius is nympholepsy, the saddening for a spirit that the world knows not."

I don't think I've got that, as what I've been saddening for lately is more like those nifty frozen California Pizza Kitchen pizzas, but who knows? Perhaps those are more otherworldly than I think.

The best thing in the Oxford English Dictionary's online version is the example sentences:

"The wonderful rise of this quondam nip-cheese has made him very proud of his own abilities."

A nip-cheese is, apparently, a ship's purser. Ooh, let's have another! I'm sorry; I just can't stop.

Did you know that "quomodocunquize" is a word? In English? It means "to make money in any possible way." Example sentence: "Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets."

I remember reading a review of someone's work in which the reviewer praised the poet for working some variation of "rhizome" into the poem. Well, sirrah, I see your rhizome, and raise you a quomodocunquize!

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

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