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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

My sister recently e-mailed me a link to an article that should be dear to every Wordie's heart. It made me ashamed of my limited vocabulary, and also sad that I could not wrap my tongue comfortably around the word pusillanimous. Why is it our words generally get so much more vague when there are so many succinct words out there, if we can only claim and utilize them? Are we cowards, or just lazy?

Here it is; click on it: FWIW

2 comments:

Greg Scheer said...

I can easily pronounce "pusillanimous" because it's in a great song by the Rutles called "Another Day":

http://www.rutles.org/rsongs.html#ad
http://open.spotify.com/track/1sfr4Du0hQFt5L8sAaCzuw

But I'm still a bit fuzzy on its meaning and I'm hopeless at spelling it (I cut and pasted the word from your post). Mostly I'm just trying to reduce my vocabulary to grunting noises and various inflections of "dude".

Kimberly Long Cockroft said...

Hey, dude, FYI, "It’s usually defined as “timid” but its five syllables reach deep into the sources of timidity; it hints at depths of fear and censorious child-rearing." --from the article linked above

At least we know how to cut and paste, right?