As a past student of English, I love words. Even as a young child I loved words and books. I was excellent in spelling tests, and I would write short stories too. At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I liked looking up words I’d heard and couldn’t wait to get out the dictionary and look up a word I didn’t know or to crack open the thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms of words that I’d learnt. My Mum bought us kids a collection of reference books and dictionaries; how she afforded it back then I don’t know. Despite now having easy access to the internet, I still often drag out my huge dictionary, or smaller thesaurus to look up a word or for a different word, meaning the same or similar.

These days, with my memory sometimes taking a short sabbatical, my son helps a lot with words I’ve temporarily forgotten, and my thesaurus is a great help too. Two words I often can’t keep in my head are ‘consultant’ – someone who provides expert advice, and ‘syllable.’ Seriously, it took me ages to remember those words for this blog. I don’t know what it is about certain words, but they won’t stay. I may remember them, out of the blue, but later they’ll fade again. It's frustrating.

My ex, who now resides in Australia, was always a tad pompous or self-important, and his favourite words were discombobulated and enervated. Why he had to use those words instead of saying confused and disconcerted, or feeling drained of energy and vitality (in order) was quite beyond me. A manager from years back was particularly verbose, and if he could use more words than are necessary to describe something, then he would. He also liked to draw on the whiteboard when trying to explain something to his poor staff though I can’t come up with a word or phrase for that, not whilst trying to be polite LMAO. It was amusing on times, and I often felt he missed his calling as a teacher, or something…

My favourite word is ‘disingenuous.’ To use it in a sentence form: I feel it’s disingenuous to thank someone when you are forcing them to do something. It’s a bit like robbing someone, and then thanking them for the money you stole from them; it’s not candid, and it’s not sincere.

Many, many years ago my (now) ex and I joined one of those god-awful book clubs. The initial ‘offer’ was great, and that’s how they suck you in, but afterwards, when we had to order x number of books over a 12-month period, we were often at a loss and so bought dictionaries. I have a large Oxford Reference English Dictionary, a Thesaurus, a Dictionary of English Usage, one of Grammar, Famous Quotations, Gardening, and a World Atlas. They’re all big, and heavy, and you can probably find all this information on the internet, but I love these books and would hate to part with any of them.

My son, being an ‘art’ student, doesn’t have much truck with words in the way that I do, and he often mispronounces words that are in common usage. A great aunt, who he never got to meet, was the same and it would often provide amusement to my ex, apparently. Ah, English is a funny language isn’t it?

I’ve tweaked my diet a little in that, for example, I’m eating more foods that are rich in iron, and at the risk of being accused of verbosity I feel less enervated, definitely less discombobulated, I’m sleeping better so far, and I’m not being disingenuous. What a laugh…

Have a good weekend, enjoy life and laugh whilst we still can :)