Save the Words?

Really? Uh. Huh. ... According to "The Word Wide Web" in Poets and Writers’ News and Trends article, "Oxford Fajar, a subsidiary of Oxford University Press, launched [a] linguistic stimulation project: the Save the Words campaign, which allows anyone to 'adopt' one or more words that have fallen out of popular usage. On the project’s Web site, users can subscribe to a word-a-day email list, get tips on how to incorporate words like nidifice (nest) into their next work meeting, and create custom T-shirts with their adopted word.”

Wow. Well, my computer doesn’t even recognize the word nidifice. Nidify is in my Webster Collegiate, but even so, I have to think that if I used this word in any social/business setting—even if its meaning could be gleaned through connotation—I’m likely to get some blank stares. Then, who gives a shit about audience and purpose, so long as we all stay really, really smart and we don’t let our language thin (the only thing in America we don't want to trim down).

I keep spinning the commercial for this—a bunch of mis-fonted, oddly-capitalized, and weeping GRE words with captions on the bottom of the screen: “Why did you not use me over mochas with Bill? Why did you drop me from your dinnertime talk with the kids? Really, what does nugatory have that I don’t? Triflin' bitch.

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Anyway, and more importantly: today Traci Brimhall—a great poet I met at Sewanee Writers’ Conference—is on Poetry Daily. Check out her lovely poem, and watch for her book Rookery, which won the Crab Orchard First Book Award and is forthcoming in 2010.

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Alas, it is too cold even to hike today. I am on day two of dog-sitting, and I cannot take her now. At least we got in a bit of time yesterday. I was able to try out the snowshoes my boys bought me with their Christmas money (yep, they really did!), and Euchre was able to run for three miles through the snow (off-leash at six months old). I’m still not sure how I’m going to tell her parents that we are now family and cannot be separated.


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