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Today’s mail brought me a fabulous birthday gift from the dealership where I purchased my car. A whole ten dollars to be used toward any purchase or service.
As long as it’s by February 28th. So generous.
This sort of stuff irritates me!
Like the refund cheque for 35 cents I was sent a year or so ago.
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This brings up a word I learned when I was a child and which stuck, example of its own definition:
Floccinaucinihilipilification.
Estimating something as worthless.
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Coincidentally, this very word came up earlier this morning which I’m sure you’ll agree is rather rare.
It was once the longest word in the English language, now:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
A lung disease you get from inhaling silica from volcanoes.
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The latter is what I would call a compound word, so in my book it shouldn’t count.
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
There’s another cheat as far as I’m concerned. Doesn’t it just mean establishmentarian?
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Why complicate things?
No doubt my imperfect education is showing. Leaving England at the age of 8, I bounced around a selection of schools, American and French before being sent back 6 years later, at which point I think I was supposed to know the basics I had missed out on.
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Upon my return, I was taught Chaucer and Shakespeare.
The latter lodged in my brain. The former, floccinaucinihilipilification.
Who, in the 21st century, cares about the Canterbury Tales? In old English?
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Nice to know about, but of no use whatsoever.
Arriving in the States, aged now 16, I spent a positively dreadful year not fitting in to the senior year of high school, which left me feeling like a complete nobody.
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After years in convent schools where classes consisted of some 20 students, I was suddenly in a co-ed class of hundreds.
At that stage, I barely knew what a boy looked like and had no clue how to interact with one, though this turned out not to matter since barely anyone spoke to me.
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One of our neighbours had a son who was a year older than me and I was persuaded it would be cute for me to go on a date with him. It was not cute.
On the day, I dressed nicely. He turned up in scruffy jeans and took me to McDonald’s which was fair enough. I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, but clean clothes would have been nice.
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My escort’s main interest was in was clamming, which rather limited our conversation and I imagined that I’d made no great impression, so I was surprised and dismayed to be asked for a second date.
No-one had taught me how to politely refuse, so the following weekend I was collected again and very soon found him halfway down my throat, which I was unprepared for, yet still I could not find the words to decline a third date.
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That next rendezvous was a double date which saw us at a drive-in movie, but the purpose was apparently not film viewing. Things quickly got hot and heavy in the back seat and clearly I was expected to enter into the spirit, whereupon I found the ability to resist.
Afterwards, I was driven home and dumped on the doorstep and happily, that was the end of that.
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For college admission there was something called a scholastic assessment test. I believe there was a study guide to help you prepare, but I knew nothing of this and I had great difficulty both with the curriculum and the format of multiple choice answers.
On the day of the test, I had a splitting headache which was no help and my results weren’t good, which was very demoralizing, not least because I was berated by my uncle.
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Never-the-less, I graduated and was admitted to a local university where I registered with the English department.
To my disgust, I was told I must attend speech therapy classes because I had a lisp, which was not true, though what choice did I have but to comply?
(I only bought into this for one semester)
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There was another compulsory class I didn’t care for, but at least it had a useful purpose.
In order to graduate, you had to be able to swim the length of the swimming pool, so that first semester saw me traipsing across the freezing campus early in the morning with wet hair, en-route to astronomy, as I recall.
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Students May Very Easily Master Astronomy, Just Stay Up Nights Practicing.
Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
See. It stuck too.
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As an elective, I signed up for anthropology and very soon I switched my major, finding it very much more interesting than English.
Very much more useless too, unless you plan to pursue it academically and I had no such luxury option.
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Fact of the matter was, I was clueless about so many things. I had vague ideas of what I might like to do, but having borrowed funds to pay my way through college, once I graduated I needed to find employment quickly.
A BA in anthropology qualified me for nothing.
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My aunt had worked for BOAC and with family overseas as well as a desire to travel, this seemed like a good option for me. So that is where I ended up.
After 30 years at JFK, I transferred to Seattle where I served another 8 years. I would like to have made it to at least 40, but my spine gave out and I did not fancy working from a wheelchair or expecting colleagues to carry my load, so I took early retirement.
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Since then, I’ve had the very much more rewarding job of caring for cats.
It’s possible they are even less grateful than the travelling public, but they are far less annoying.
*This lovely boy came to us cruelly named Worthless. We immediately changed it to Toby.
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But I’ve not said where floccinaucinihilipilification came up this morning.
It happened to be mentioned in a YouTube video by a young man from Northern Ireland whose teacher taught it to him.
This lad developed Tourette’s syndrome at age 16 and in the video he was demonstrating what happens when he attempts complicated words.
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How this came into my feed, I don’t know, but I was ready for any sort of distraction.
If you are interested (and not afraid of raw language) the link is: Lewis Qball.
He offers opinions about our new president that I found quite entertaining 🙂
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Goodness, Carolyn, what an exciting life you had! Your memories of various schools, dates, and learning difficult lengthy words took my breath away! I didn’t know that there was a word connected with sniffing things in places far from ever reaching for most of us. I love the photo of the cat called Worthless by someone stupid, and the new name you gave him. I love all the other musings too! Thank you!
floccinaucinihilipilification my dad’s favourite word, although (strangely) he also loved antidisestablishmentarianism. As for the idiot date, well lets say ‘different times’ and give him the benefit. Still an idiot though.
For the simple minded there’s always irregardless as a non-word. Chaucer and Willy are the forefathers of modern story tropes. Click on the Hallmark Channel or any of the streaming demons from prime time to reruns and there they are. A stranger comes to town, someone goes on an adventure, Chauver, Shakespeare and the Bible. Scary we haven’t thought of anything new in 700 years. In English. Be glad they didn’t make you read Antiquities in the native language.
I’d better not get near volcanoes and get a lung disease, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to pronounce that word! I don’t know if I would have survived so many different schools – I suspect routine and familiar environments were my anchor in those years. You’ve come a long way (and not really an easy one might I say) and yet you find joy in what you’re doing today – well done for that! Oh, and as for Toby – that name suited him perfectly!
I would have failed the American college system as I never learned to swim. Teenage dating memories are toe-curling. I was once shouted at by a girl for NOT trying to feel her up. She said, “There must be something wrong with you, you had better go home”.
I was always taught the word ‘Irregardless’, and it is only since I started blogging in 2012 I have seen mention of it not being a real word.
Best wishes, Pete.