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Word
North Miami Beach, FL April 27, 2001
Aaron H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
WORD
"Word" is the name of a computer software program that enables writers and
others to compose such essays as THINKING ALLOWED.
Some "words" have interesting sounds apart from their meanings. A word such
as "confabulation" came to my attention this morning. I had to look it up.
It means to converse but its meaning does not have the interest the sound of
the word "confabulation" has all by itself.
I have been attracted to words all my life and I remember how using "big"
words when only a little kid attracted welcome attention from adults. One
of my all time favorite authors had a hero "Doc Savage" who was well over
six feet tall, perfectly proportioned, supremely muscled, golden tan with
slightly wavy gold hair and gold-flecked eyes. He spoke little but
authoritatively in a way that made men follow him anywhere into danger
(strangely there were few women of any import in his life or the stories in
which he starred). It was one of his "team", a big-brained scientist who
seemed to specialize in words beginning with "super-" that attracted my
attention. He used 'superamalgamated' a lot in exclamations such as "Well,
I'll be superamalgamated". I liked that.
We all know supercalifragalisticexpialidocious I'm sure. But this doesn't
mean anything. It is the really big words that doctors use and scientists
employ that have tremendous meaning as well as super sounds.
My best word is 52 letters long. It took me only a few minutes to learn it
because I was shown it when I was teaching junior high school English. In
those classes I used a big word, "syllabication", to explain how to break
down big words into small parts so you could reassemble them back into the
big blockbuster one. No, it isn't antidisestablishmentarianism - we all
know that one too.
My word is pneumonoultrophotomicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. It
describes the disease of the lungs that miners get, also called "black
lung."
One of my junior high kids showed it to me. It was on a Fleers' Bubble Gum
wrapper. It can be pronounced. Try it. Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.
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