I have been having a bit of a rant about words not being words. This is chiefly because the child of my loins uses stupid and as I thought non-words in our scrabble game. For instance wees is not the plural of wee. I am putting her on notice that I will look up any of her fanciful words and force to her say that she is sorry, and that she will never do it again.
I used a word a few weeks ago that I was convinced did not exist. Quod was my word and I cleverly managed to get 105 points for it. Quod is an British slang word for the prison exercise yard. So I was not clever or sneaky at all, so it is quite disappointing really.
I have wondered about some words as they do not seem to be used in every day speech. Whelm means to engulf entirely. So if you are underwhelmed you have not quite been engulfed and overwhelmed means that you are totally buried or engulfed past the whelm. I must think of some way where I can absolutely say I am overwhelmed. Maybe I could go down to the beach and get many people to cover me with sand and then I could honestly say, "I am whelmed today."
On television last night someone said something about being disgruntled. Aha! now that is interesting, I have never been gruntled and that is because folks there is no such word. There is grunt which applies to pigs. There is disgruntled which means make sulky or discontented. However, there is no such thing as gruntled. Ask the Concise Oxford Dictionary if you don't believe me. So if you see me skipping along and singing to myself it is not because I am in pre-senility mode but that I am gruntled. I love it. Use the word every day and some day it might actually make it to the dictionary.
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