#reallylongwords

"Defenestration!" I flung open the windows of the classroom and pretended to catapult myself outside, "means the act of throwing out the window!" As their teacher I could not have tried any harder without endangering my life, and my students could not have been more bored. The year was 1999 and I was a poor college student. My friend, Amit, convinced me teaching SAT Verbal to students in Staten Island was the quickest way to make a buck. And so I found myself on Saturday mornings, surrounded by a group of spiritless students - the girls filing their impeccably long fake nails and the boys loaded with big gold chains - indifferently watching my antics as attempts to teach them really long words in preparation for the SATs. The experience wasn't terribly enjoyable - though I did earn good pocket money - but this was the definitive start of my long and fruitless love affair with really long words.

The etymology of words fascinate me, and I studied just enough Latin to guesstimate my way through really long words. Antediluvian (something to do with a flood), bombastic (obnoxious, of sorts), pulchritudinous (sounds like a disease but means breathtaking beauty), pentultimate (means second last)... learning each new word was thrilling, being able to actually pronounce them was exhilarating. "If you don't know how to say a word, say it loud!" implores words guru William Strunk. So I would unabashedly mispronounce words loud and proud.

I was fortunate to find a fellow wordphile in my former boss. She possessed a beautiful turn of phrase embedded even in commonplace business communication. Messages she penned from the Board of Governors contained lyricism. The most valuable lesson I learned from her, however, is no matter how vast one's lexicon of multisyllabic words, the goal of communication is clarity. An esoteric term is only to be used when no other word would convey the message precisely. Hence, my choicest word of this unusual season, elegant in its simplicity, unambiguous in its emphasis, and in fact not a very long word at all, is “WTF!!!"

(Not to be confused with another acronym used with increasing familiarity, WFH).