f-words about words
one of my tricks is that i read 6 or 7 books in parallel. among others, there is: the book that i keep on my nightstand for when i can’t sleep, the book i carry in my murse for when i am riding a bus, and the book that i read while listening to my yanni live at the acropolis cd. reading books concurrently like this takes a long time—it took me ten years to get through my laundromat book, gravity’s rainbow—but there is one manner of book that i can get though in as little as two weeks: my mani-pedi book.
this week’s mani-pedi book was david gramb’s words about words dictionary. here are a few f-words that hoài mi and i selected while i was soaking my feet in a garra rufa aquarium earlier this afternoon.
- façon de parler · way of speaking; manner of expression.
- fadaise · an obvious remark.
- fallacy of the beard · the fallacy of arguing by grasping at a stage of situation, as by reasoning that “one more [day, purchase, attempt, etc.] won’t matter.”
- false comparative · a word that, extreme or categorical in meaning, in principle cannot be modified, eg. “unique,” “simultaneous,” and “eternally.”
- false illiteracy · a pointless misspelling that retains pronunciation, e.g.”duz” for “does” or “wimin” for “women.”
- farpotshket · crossed out and erased and rewritten.
- fasgrolia · the fast growing language of initialisms and acronyms.
- faux naïf · falsely simple; feigning artlessness.
- femme savant · a learned, literary woman.
- fictioneering · the writing or marketing of fiction in quantity that is of low or sensationalized quality.
- flannel mouthed · oily-tongued; mellifluous; soft-soaping.
- framis · comic doubletalk blending actual words with made-up words.
