Wordplay – Obsequious

Ob-se-qui-ous: Full of or exhibiting servile compliance, fawning.

Her obsequious comments and actions were more believable than even she might have imagined.”

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Wordplay – Surfeit

It’s been months since I entered a Wordplay post. This one seems poignant given we’re a week out from the U.S. Thanksgiving.  If you want to see other Wordplays – just enter the word “wordplay” in the search bar at the top of the page.

Surfeit (pronounced sur-fit): to feed or supply to fullness or excess; satiate. 1. Overindulgence in food or drink.  2. An excessive amount

The smells of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and dinner rolls filled the air on Thanksgiving Day. But after the enormous dinner, you could cut the surfeited air with a knife.

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Wordplay – Lugubrious

Contrary to popular rumors and beliefs, the word lugubrious has nothing to do with loogies, gooey substances or brie cheese that’s gone bad in the fridge.

Lu-gu-bri-ous is just another way to say you’re super sad or mournful – to a very exaggerated or even ludicrous extent.

Jason Mraz writes in his song, “I’ll Do Anything,”

I can be lugubrious with you.

Placed in the lyric’s context, Mraz is simply stating he’s willing to sit with his sweetheart and be mournful in the moment if that’s what it takes.

Lugubrious. In my teenager daughter’s world, it’s an “emo” word with a lot of weight.

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Wordplay – Sequacious

September 28 and it’s a beautiful autumn day in Minneapolis.

Homecoming football games, crisp fall evenings, road side pumpkin stands, and pots of chili are all in order.

The word for today is se-qua-cious:

1) persisting in a continuous intellectual or stylistic direction;  2) disposed to follow another or others as a leader; 3) slavishly unthinking and uncritical.

If you don’t question and wonder out loud, then you succumb along with the sequacious herd in queue for a life of bland and boring.

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Wordplay – Penetralia

pen-e-tra-li-a

1. The innermost parts of a building, especially the sanctuary of a temple; 2. The most private or secret parts; recesses

The penetralia of the soul.

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A Point to Ponder

I’m moving forward.  Don’t hate me. Even though I’m a resident of “The City Where the Bridge Collapsed,” it’s time to get life back to normal. As normal as is possible without getting all weird.  So here’s a thought to contemplate:

“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself appear as stupid as his audience so that they’ll believe they’re as smart as he is.”

— Karl Kraus

In my role as a public relations “counselor,” I wonder if I tell my CEO this, he’ll buy it or if he’ll look at me and stare, thinking, “And you are…???”

Did Kraus really mean one should appear as stupid as his audience? Or does he essentially believe that a great speaker who speaks to the common ground of his or her audience will garner the best results?  Perhaps Hillary Clinton could learn something from this.

Perhaps we all could focus a bit more and consider our audience before our mouths start flapping.

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Blog Dictionary: The Egotistical Windbag

I often will post on a word that intrigues me, however, today I’m choosing to make up my own word for possible submission to Webster’s.

Here’s the word: windtistical; a combination of windbag and egotistical. It’s the perfect description of any blogger who writes enough drivel to clog an entire server. These blog authors are so infatuated with themselves that they also frequently scrawl longer responses to the comments posted by the blog’s readers than the readers write themselves.  Since we’re such an icon based society on the Interweb, I’ve inserted “windtistical’s” icon here. Note how the head is disproportionately larger than the body.

Windtisticals can, from time to time, appear interested and engaged; but they are more often self-centered, judgmental and filled with the most tepid of angry gases that culminate in nothing useful to society.

I’m calling Webster’s now.

If you could make a word and add to the blogger’s dictionary, what would it be? What would it mean?

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