Words of the Day

When I encounter a word I don’t know, or don’t know well, I look it up and write it on a list. Often later, reviewing the list, I’ve forgotten what the word means, this word that had such audacity as to be new to me—me, a word person, right? So I look it up again, and since I’ve read its meaning once before, the word is a little more familiar. But it’s now bereft of context, detached from its original mooring, stripped clean, incorporeal. It’s no longer noun or adjective or verb; it cannot do the work of meaning making. It just lies indignantly among its brethren, waiting.

I look at this list every day, lately, this impertinent, chanting crowd: violacious, adumbrate, exculpate, eidetic. And I pluck one word from its raucous company, and give it primacy that day. One day recently was cathexis. It was a deeply cathexis day. Another day was jejune, another revenant.

And so the word, connected to its day, re-acquires context, meaning, its queer significance. It can do some work, and so it lives again.

Original copyright 1 January 2010.