FYLLOK by Pierce Wigglesworth, III I’m sure my esteemed competition will attempt to convince you of the benefits of resurrecting a word like “freaming” (said of the noise a boar makes in rutting time) because the pronunciation and the concept is hilarious. Or “fuckwind” (a species of hawk) because it’s got the word “fuck” in it. If you pause to think on it though, many of the archaic f-words are just that: archaic, and have few opportunities for use in the modern era. My boars, for example, are all sows and, as everyone knows, rutting season won’t be for at least three months yet.I submit that whichever word we choose should obey the following criteria: It should be unique in structure and spelling. Encountering the word should have any self-respecting reader scrambling for a dictionary (which shall be useless for now) or, to our benefit, scrambling for a search engine. If the word looks broadly familiar, if its meaning can be garnered through abstraction, then the eye will pass over it with barely a flicker. The word must be a show-stopper. A speedbump on the road to understanding. The above more than meets that requirement. It’s bizarre.Secondly, and perhaps more crucially, the word should have modern application. As any of you who read the accounts of my Parnassian exploits will know, if there’s one thing I could always use another synonym for it’s wanton ladies. Often by the end of a third paragraph detailing my afternoon I will have exhausted just about every expression for a wanton lady in my thesaurus. Obviously I’m coming at this from somewhat of a personal angle, but in fairness, any aid provided to an artist of my calibre benefits society as a whole. __ pierce, as i have mentioned before, was my kid sister’s first suitor. little did he know at the time, that as fylloks go, my kid sister is perhaps the most wanton of them all. if they were to name a soup after her it would be called fyllok soup. pierce, at any rate, is a warrior-poet who lives in ireland. he has followed in the great irish literary tradition of creating his own ex libris out of a potato (this is, believe it or not, very true). this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

FYLLOK

by Pierce Wigglesworth, III

I’m sure my esteemed competition will attempt to convince you of the benefits of resurrecting a word like “freaming” (said of the noise a boar makes in rutting time) because the pronunciation and the concept is hilarious. Or “fuckwind” (a species of hawk) because it’s got the word “fuck” in it. If you pause to think on it though, many of the archaic f-words are just that: archaic, and have few opportunities for use in the modern era. My boars, for example, are all sows and, as everyone knows, rutting season won’t be for at least three months yet.

I submit that whichever word we choose should obey the following criteria: It should be unique in structure and spelling. Encountering the word should have any self-respecting reader scrambling for a dictionary (which shall be useless for now) or, to our benefit, scrambling for a search engine. If the word looks broadly familiar, if its meaning can be garnered through abstraction, then the eye will pass over it with barely a flicker. The word must be a show-stopper. A speedbump on the road to understanding. The above more than meets that requirement. It’s bizarre.

Secondly, and perhaps more crucially, the word should have modern application. As any of you who read the accounts of my Parnassian exploits will know, if there’s one thing I could always use another synonym for it’s wanton ladies. Often by the end of a third paragraph detailing my afternoon I will have exhausted just about every expression for a wanton lady in my thesaurus. Obviously I’m coming at this from somewhat of a personal angle, but in fairness, any aid provided to an artist of my calibre benefits society as a whole.

__

pierce, as i have mentioned before, was my kid sister’s first suitor. little did he know at the time, that as fylloks go, my kid sister is perhaps the most wanton of them all. if they were to name a soup after her it would be called fyllok soup. pierce, at any rate, is a warrior-poet who lives in ireland. he has followed in the great irish literary tradition of creating his own ex libris out of a potato (this is, believe it or not, very true).

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

December 8, 2009
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