FRIMICATE

by the entity known as Brainland

I don’t really know how I got roped into this bullshit because Brainland doesn’t take orders from anyone. This said, I’m writing in hopes that you’ll allow frimicate into your lexicon.  To frimicate means to affect an air of delicacy.  Unfortunately there are plenty of great modern words that are almost synonymous, eliminating the most obvious justification for frimicate’s resurgence (necessity).  Words like rococo, dainty, flamboyant, ostentatious, and even pretentious all nearly get at the substance of frimication.  But not quite.

While doing some research (drinking) for my formal απολογία here, I was reminded of a traumatic story from a close friend’s formative years.  When this friend was very young, a student teacher announced the day’s vocabulary word and so wrote flamboyant on the board in ominous capital letters.  She then invited the class to spend the next hour using flamboyant in sentences with my friend as the subject, “[NAME WITHHELD] is flamboyant because…” and the room full of fifth graders giggled their way through a vocabulary lesson that would disrupt this fellow’s psychosexual development some years (/to this day).

Now, imagine what would happen if the student teacher had prompted the class to use frimicate in a sentence.  Brainland can conceive of two scenarios: 1) the little snot buckets would blink dumbly and look at each other because the letters of frimicate are without the affected daintiness of its definition or 2) they’d assume that the robust, masculine word journey that is frimicate meant something more like to strike or to obliterate, and might instead offer, “[NW] frimicates because he doesn’t take shit,” or “[NW] frimicates because he fucking wants to.”  Even if they were to use it accurately—“Sometimes [NW] will frimicate but pay no ill attention because he ain’t a bitch”—that’d still be cool.

Brainland thinks frimicate should come back because it’s one of those words that doesn’t reveal its definition in the way it sounds or, rather, sounds like the opposite of what it is (like nonplussed or inflammable), which means people will use it incorrectly, which then means it will become an easy indicator of who’s trying too hard.  Or, even… who’s frimicating.

I should mention that this piece is kind of just a place holder until I can get someone representing the frimicate estate to sing “Candle in the Wind” or some shit because I’m here to win and that song is such a crowd pleaser, you know?

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brainland and i were once members of an all female a capella group called grrrl power. for me, it was mostly about the bosom buddies-style hijinks that i would get myself into while singing falsetto. for her it was mostly about showing up the rest of the chorus girls with sick scat riffs as well as developing her own variety of stentorian beat boxing which sent sonic explosions through all the hearing aids in all the wrinkled lobes of all the old fogers in every nursing home that we toured through.

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