What I'm talking about is her gift for coining words or phrases. If you haven't witnessed her process, you may be inclined to dismiss it as "malapropism" as I once did. However I believe now that it is a gift, and it's results should be treasured like diamonds harvested from the darkest deepest mine. Lewis Carroll asserted that such an ability (as he was also blessed with) was the result of a mind so perfectly balanced that it is able to draw upon two words that approximate an idea and combine them into one word that truly describes it.
So, inasmuch as I have decided to treasure these gems, and since I have the memory of a lobotomized gnat, I need to document them for posterity.
After scrolling through pages and pages of "Free" stuff on craigslist, and whittling down the list of must-haves to some church pews, a few slabs of marble, a pallet of bricks and some patio furniture, Heidi talked to me about it and we decided the patio furniture was really the only practical thing to pursue; the others having merit but also each the fatal flaw of being uncomfortable, heavy and heavy respectively.
The next day, she received a reply from the person who had advertised the patio furniture. His claim was that he had received 223 responses overnight and that now the patio furniture would be awarded to the first person offering $50.
Heidi thought it was probably still a good deal, but on principal she decided it would be best not to bid again. In her words:
The two most obvious contributors to this new word are:"That's just not right. I'm not going to deal with someone who offers
something for free and then, when he finds out there is more interest, tries to
reniggle."
renege, which means: To fail to carry out a promise or commitment
and niggle, which means: To be preoccupied with trifles or petty details.
Reniggle, then, as this story should make clear, is the perfect word for the act of failing to carry out a promise or commitment due to preoccupation with trifles or petty details, which, by the way, was precisely what the man was guilty of. After all, he could easily have awarded the furniture to the first responder. I'm almost certain his e-mail software enabled that ability. But, he became greedy. He could perhaps be considered a greniggler (greedy reniggler), if I may try my hand at word-generation.
This post was written in this combination of voices:
20% George Emerson
40% Cecil Vyse
30% Jerome K. Jerome
10% A.A. Milne
7 comments :
Excellent, excellent.
Thank you. I knew this was one of my better posts.
Your story reminds me of my favorite phrases that Granny made up on the fly:
Two little girls (Margy and Jane) were on the sofa with Granny. They were laying with their feet toward each other, doing the "bicycle" thing when it became rather violent. The girl closest to Granny was shoved into her side with a continual bumping motion. Granny said, "girls, stop that. You're involving an innocent by-sitter."
The other statement was when Grandpa said he thought he might grow a beard, because it would probably be so good looking that it would be outstanding. Granny replied, "yes, it would be outstanding...outstanding in the carport."
Reniggle is added to my personal dictionary and to my list of similies, 'lobotomized gnat'.
Good stuff that.
Heidi is too cute! Mom did have a lot of those too it's true. She also used rhyme and alliteration; turkey lurkey, fatso fogarty etc... I just checked to make sure I was spelling alliteration correctly and in my dictionary under Cougar is my old Rose Bowl ticket from 1998. A Zimmerman influence on my bookshelf to be sure.
It's great to know that turkey-lurkey came from her. Can someone provide an example of how she would have used it in context?
I laughed out loud when reading of "fatso Fogarty" and "Turkey Lurkey" I hadn't thought of them in so long, Mom had a way with words all right! However, hmmm I thought, I thiiiink Turkey Lurkey is from a nursery rhyme that Mom used to read to us. I looked all through the beloved "Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature" nothing, hmmm I was positive it was from a child's story, so onto Wikipedia and lo and behold there it was:
""Nothing to do now but go home," said Turkey Lurkey.
And they did.""
Famous ending lines from the story Chicken Little and "The sky is falling".
I will have to think how she used it in everyday conversation, probably to inject some humor into her life, a thing she was always doing -- injecting humor! I briefly reread Chicken Little, it is still as wonderful as I recall, and full of alliteration -- and yes I can just hear Mom reading it.
I think I will reread it as an adult and see if I can discover what Mom found so enchanting in that tale, when I was little she read it to me a LOT, when she wasn't singing "Davy Crockett" to Tom.
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