I envy people who have the ability to pluck the right word when they need it and place it neatly in a sentence where they need it, just so.
For me, it's like the language center of my brain is actually this little man with whom I have to play charades... okay, there's a word I want... it sounds like... first letter is... how many syllables? ... rhymes with... okay, it's got a certain letter in it... or, it ends with... it means something to the effect of...
And yet... when I wake up in the morning, there's quite often a ghost of a word on my lips... as if my subconscious has a Word~Of~The~Day feature.
Evidently my muse works best in the mornings.
The night before last, I woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep; there was a word in my head, and the word was palimpsest. So there I was, looking up the word palimpsest in the dictionary at 3AM. Yup. Palimpsest.
This morning, the word was peripatetic. Looking it up nearly made me late for work.
If that wasn't peculiar enough, the even funnier thing is that I seem to be working my way through the P's, in no particular order.
When I first posted about this, the word was plimsoll. And pulegone. Since then I've had passerine, pissenlit, and the Peaceable Kingdom. And Noilly Prat. A week or so ago, I think the word may have been passe partout, or maybe even pousse~pierre, but I didn't make a note of it, and now I can't remember for sure.
Perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me I'm really P~celtic, rather than Q~celtic...
Posted by edgar at August 7, 2004 12:28 PM