Indubitably. (I just threw that in for effect.)
A short rabbit trail…I used to have this friend named Ernesto that could blow us all out of the water vocabulary-wise. He was a preacher, and he had no problem getting up in front of everybody and throwing words out there like parametrage (which isn’t even English) and look at us all like we were supposed to know what it meant. Anyhow.
I’ve noticed that several widely-used words have somehow gotten by me–and apparently a few other people. I see them in print, on advertising, on company names when I’m driving by, and I don’t know what the words mean. And that’s disturbing to me, because the words seem to be popular, like I ought to know them. And if anyone is in the car (or even if no one is in the car), I might ask, “What does that word mean?” And if there is anyone in the car, they usually say, “I dunno.” (So far, I haven’t heard any voices answer when no one else is in the car, so that’s good. But if they did, I don’t think they would know, either.)
So I’ve started a short list of a few of these words that I see that have no idea what they mean, and no one I talk to seems to know, either. I guess I could look them up on dictonary.com, but I’m just too lazy. (Although, obviously, I’m not too lazy to provide the link.)
Without further ado…here is the list of words I’ve compiled so far. There are three so far…although when I couldn’t sleep last night I thought of a couple of others, but now that it’s daytime I forgot them. See if you know what these mean:
- Serendipity. (I always have this impulse to add “doo da day” to the end of this word.)
- Halcyon. (Is that a “k” sound or an “s” sound?)
- Ubiquitous. (Okay, I haven’t seen this one while driving around, but it still sounds cool. Wish I knew what it meant.)
🙂
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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O.K. – I think this is some kind of trap or something – but people have called me Mr. Know-it-all so here goes:
Serendipity = good fortune or something like that. You could also say that something is serendipitous (sp?).
Halcyon – ?? I think…. Good days/ Glory days gone by??? I dunno. I’m gonna cheat as soon as I’m done.
Ubiquitous = something akin to ever-present – everywhere – as in “…there arose the ubiquitous sound of scratching heads as Jeff posed yet another challenge with which to bake our noodles.”
Ok, since I too am somewhat of a wordsmith here are my off-the-cuff responses.
Serendipity – an outcome that was unintended but beneficial as if guided by fate.
Halcyon – soft “c”, connotes metaphoric saltiness.
Ubiquitous – the state of something becoming so commonplace that it seems to infiltrate everything, everywhere.
Ok, now I will go to dictionary.com and see how close I am!
Ubiquity is all about being all over the place. First heard it in trhe 80s when I worked for AT&T.. who wanted to serve everyone evcerywhere.
Douglas is right. My dad is a wordsmith and when I was growing up our big dictionary sat right next to the tv (irony anyone?). My dad would regularly run across a word and ask us what we thought it meant. If we didn’t have a good answer we had to get out the dictionary and look it up.
Great post! I purchased a book several weeks ago titled “Word Nerd” by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. The book contains more than 17,000 fascinating facts about words….and it’s so cool! Basically, anytime this author saw a word she loved (or did not know the meaning of) – she wrote it down and then eventually combined everything into a book.
For example, in this book – here is what she says about “serendipity”…”comes from a Persian fairy tale (“Three Princes of Serendip”) about itinerant heros constantly discovering valuable or pleasant things that they were not seeking.
Just personally learned what ubiquitous meant last year!
Okay guys, I got over my laziness and looked them up. And the winner is…Doug. At least, he got more of it right than the others (nice attempts, Steve). Although even Doug was a little vague on “halcyon.”
It’s no freaking wonder people don’t know what “halcyon” means, because there are about 20 different definitions for it. 🙂 Let’s see…halcyon can mean calm, peaceful, prosperous, wealthy, happy, carefree…or a kind of mythological bird. What??? Um, I guess you could say the definitions for “halcyon” are “ubiquitous” by Kansas Bob’s definition. 🙂
Stacy, my friend Ernesto had a similar experience as a child, which is why his vocabulary is, um, ubiquitous. 🙂
Kelly, thanks for the background on serendipity.
Aaroneous…so…what does ubiquitous mean THIS year? 🙂
I’m feeling a little recalcitrant about discussing my definition of ubiquitous in such a public forum.
Crap.
4. Recalcitrant.