My Pudency Moment

My mother makes quilts.  Gorgeous quilts.  Yet, when she talks about them, with gread pudency she claims ‘they aren’t anything special.’  I beg to differ.

Pudency [pyood-n-see] is a noun that means modesty.  So, my mother is very modest about her quilt making skills.  She has pudency.  She compares herself with her sister-in-law who does machine embroidery on quilts.  Since my mother can’t do machine embroidery, she feels she isn’t as good.  But she pieces quilts and makes fabulously beautiful ones!

Pudency also means bashfulness.  Maybe you know someone who has done something that you think is spectacularly fabulous.  Yet that person’s pudency (bashfulness) keeps him from bragging about his deeds.

Pudency can also mean embarrassment.  Pudency definitely describes my feelings of a situation I was in several years ago.  At that time, I was playing the piano for a children’s church meeting.  I started playing the song in the key of C.  It was written in the key of E flat.  I started laughing so hard at my mistake that I banged my head on the piano.  Talk about pudency!

I hope you don’t find yourself in situations where you feel pudency like I did!

Me? Ineffable?

Saturday, our daughter gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.  There were some possibilities of complications with the birth.  So, I had been anxious for the past two weeks as the due date drew closer.

Everything went just fine with the delivery.  What a great blessing.  As I held the sweet baby in my arms, the love I felt for her and for my daughter and son-in-law was ineffable.

Ineffable [in-ef-uh-buhl] is an adjective that means incapable of being expressed or described in words.  Inexpressible.  Beyond words.

Ineffable could be used to describe joyously happy and good events such as a daughter or daughter-in-law having a baby.  Babies are so precious.

Then there are those ineffable experiences that are just the opposite of what I have felt with the birth of a granddaughter.  Like what I recently learned about.  A little four-year old boy had been playing in the water in his yard.  He was cold.  He laid down on the hot cement in the driveway to warm up.  Behind a car.  His aunt (his mother’s sister) not knowing he was there, got in her car and accidentally drove over the boy, killing him.  The mother’s sadness at losing a son would be extraordinarily overwhelming.  But, imagine the ineffable soul-searing, debilitating anguish her sister would feel at being the person who was the cause of the death of her sister’s child.

As you learn and use this word, I hope it is used more to describe wonderful experiences and not sad ones.

Words from a Captivating Book

I get my words for WordSmithie from the books that I read.  (Seldom the newspapers or magazines because on good days they usually limit their vocabulary to that of a high school ninth grader.  On bad days, well, they are very elementary.)

One of my wonderful nieces (was it you, Julianne?) suggested that I read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.  It is such a spot on book for my literary soul!  It’s part fantasy.  Part thriller.  Wait, it’s a murder mystery.  No, no, it’s literary humor.  Oh my, just exactly how does one classify this book?  I fear one does not.

I’m having such a pleasurable time reading this book.  It appeals to the English major in me since there are so many literary references.  And, there are two words that have jumped out at me and said, “Learn, me!  Learn, me!”  Since I’m such an obedient person, I went ahead and did just that.

First word:  chimera.  Chimera [ki-meer-uh] is a noun that refers to a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.

This reminded me of the mythological creature I created in the fifth grade for a writing assignment: a chicken with an elephant’s head.  (Hey!  Cut me some slack.  I was in the fifth grade, ok?)

If you’re absolutely disgusted with someone, you could call them a chimera.  Like your mother-in-law.  Or your boss.  Or a bothersome neighbor.  You would know that you were commenting on how absolutely beastly they were.  They probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what you were talking about!

The other word was grotty [grot-ee -- the first syllable rhymes with bought].  Grotty is an adjective that means seedy, wretched, dirty.  A run down neighborhood could be grotty (seedy).  Or worn-out clothing (seedy and/or dirty).  If someone’s behavior was wretched you could say it was grotty.  The airline lost our son’s luggage when he went to France.  They also lost it on the flight home.  You could say his experience was grotty (wretched)!

I’ll for sure have to read more of this author’s works.  Methinks I’ll learn more new words.

How My Brain Works — Especially at 2:00 a.m.

Some nights, my eyes pop open around 2 a.m.  That signals my brain to start thinking.  And thinking.  One thought leads to another that leads to another and to yet another.  Then, I can’t get back to sleep.

So, I clamber out of bed, grab a fleece blanket, head to the family room, and read.  When I straggle to bed an hour and a half later (or sometimes two hours later) I instantly go to the land of Nod.  (And belligerently wake up at 5:15 a.m. because I haven’t had more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep.)

I wish my brain was less tumescent at times like this.

Tumescent [too-mes-uhnt] is an adjective that means exhibiting or affected with many ideas or emotions; teeming.  Teeming with ideas.  A plethora of thoughts.  That perfectly describes what my brain does on a rather regular basis during the wee hours of the night.

Teen-aged girls are often tumescent — teeming with many emotions.  One moment they are sublimely happy.  The next, they are in an abyss of despair.

Tumescent also means pompous and pretentious, esp. in the use of language.  Bombastic.  This could describe politicians, professors, or narcissistic people. Shysters, too.  Humble people don’t seem to have any problems with being tumescent.

If you work in a research and development department, it’s great to have a tumescent mind.  But only if it is tumescent between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.!

Sweetness to My Ears

The other day while reading I came across an interesting word.  Mellifluous.

Mellifluous [muh-lif-loo-uhs] is an adjective that means sweetly or smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding.  If a mother is screeching at her children, or a boss barking at an employee, or children are bickering, their voices are NOT mellifluous.

However, if your sweetheart says ‘I love you’ or your boss says ‘You get a raise’ or if a friend says ‘You look lovely today,’ those comments are mellifluous to your ears.

Other things can be sweet-sounding:  a baby cooing, a light breeze through quaking aspen trees, money jingling in your pocket, someone playing the ukulele (like a young man did on my bus ride to work this morning), rain falling on a farmer’s parched field.

If you are having a good day, or a good rehearsal before a play, or a project going as planned, you could say those experiences were mellifluous (sweetly or smoothly flowing).

Harmonious is a synonym for mellifluous.  If your children were getting along and not squabbling, their behavior is mellifluous.  If a co-worker speaks nice to you (for once), that is a mellifluous experience.  If everybody gets along at a Thanksgiving dinner (when they usually criticize, argue, or complain), that would be a mellifluous gathering.

May you bring  many mellifluous sounds into the lives of others.