{"id":5397,"date":"2022-03-21T08:07:44","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T15:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=5397"},"modified":"2022-03-21T09:53:23","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:53:23","slug":"words-words-words-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/5397","title":{"rendered":"Words Words Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My mother told me that until I was two-and-a-half, I barely spoke. She said this was because my two older sisters, close to me in age, would intuit what I wanted and speak for me. My mother further informed me that when I finally began to speak, I did so in paragraphs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In school, from First Grade through Twelfth, I was forever speaking when I wasn\u2019t supposed to be speaking, much to chagrin of my teachers. I understood intellectually why I wasn\u2019t to speak unless given permission, but I found such a dynamic emotionally abusive, so I rebelled and suffered the consequences, which were not usually dire, but frequently annoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I remember learning the word obese<\/em> when I was eight. The moment I learned the word, I encountered obese<\/em> everywhere, as if the word had been waiting for me to know its meaning before manifesting in the rest of my reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Tenth Grade, I seriously overused the word na\u00efve<\/em>, having been called na\u00efve<\/em>\nby a young woman who was briefly my girlfriend. \u201cYou are so<\/em> na\u00efve,\u201d was the denouement of her breaking-up-with-me speech, as\nif that particular word explained everything wrong with me as a boyfriend. And\nso, while recovering from the breakup, at every opportunity I would respond to things\nmy friends said with a sarcastic, \u201cHow can you be so<\/em> na\u00efve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I did not know how to spell na\u00efve<\/em>, and one day during my senior year of high school in Advanced<\/em> English \u2013 oh God the\nembarrassment \u2013 we were taking turns reading aloud from some famous work we\nwere supposed to admire, and when it came my turn to read, I encountered the\nword na\u00efve<\/em> and pronounced it knave<\/em>, which inspired great mirth and\nguffawing among my classmates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And my teacher, who had long endured my aforementioned habit of\nspeaking without first gaining his permission, declared with vindictive delight,\n\u201cThe word, Mr. Walton, is pronounced nigh-eve<\/em>,\nnot knave<\/em> as you have so grievously\nmispronounced it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To which I, red-faced, replied, \u201cOh how could I have been so<\/em> knave?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which rejoinder brought the house down and killed my teacher\u2019s momentary joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I was in my forties and living in Berkeley, I was listening\nto a cassette recording of the Monty Python sketch The Cheese Shop<\/em>, in which one of the characters enters a cheese\nshop and explains to the proprietor, \u201cI was passing by and suddenly felt\nesurient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proprietor replies, \u201cSay what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the first character repeats, \u201cEsurient. You know. Peckish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I looked up esurient<\/em>,\nfound that it means hungry<\/em>, and thereafter\nused the word zealously, which informed me that almost no one I knew had the\nslightest idea what esurient <\/em>meant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after learning the new word, I went to San Francisco to\nhave lunch with a friend who was vain of his vast vocabulary and loved\ndisplaying his familiarity with Latin. When it was time to leave his flat and\ngo to lunch, I said, \u201cNone to soon, for I am profoundly esurient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He frowned and said, \u201cSay what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a British accent I replied, \u201cEsurient. Surely you know this\nword.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. \u201cSomething you made up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNay,\u201d said I. \u201cEsurience<\/em>\nis hunger<\/em>. When one is hungry, one is\nesurient<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He rushed to his OED, looked up the word, and for years thereafter\nused esurient<\/em> at every opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fin <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ceremony of the Child<\/em> a piano song by Todd<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mother told me that until I was two-and-a-half, I barely spoke. She said this was because my two older sisters, close to me in age, would intuit what I wanted and speak for me. My mother further informed me that when I finally began to speak, I did so in paragraphs. In school, from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7301,7299,7300,1726,4305,7298],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5406,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397\/revisions\/5406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}