Ideal Bite

One of my friends has a vocabulary that makes my head spin. When I first met him, the obscure words he tossed around (like pulchritude and deleterious) made me suspicious. Is he using them correctly? Can he define them? Sometimes I'd ask for a definition, other times I'd repeat the word in my head until I found a scrap piece of paper or got to a dictionary. Yep, he was always using them correctly.

I'm kinda obsessed with definitions. Merriam-Webster is bookmarked on my browser and I refer to it at least 10 times a day. OK, it's more like 20...or more. But I'm in the industry of words, and I just happen to possess a sick fascination with language. Looking up terms I already know helps get me out of ruts. It's also probably a form of procrastination that I feel good about. Sometimes I find little gems that make me smile. The word "rut" got me today. I digress.

So, I was boring this vocab-savvy friend of mine with talk about my day and how writing heads and decks about the same topic over and over again was leaving me adverb challenged. He responded with, "What's a deck?" Ah, I'd stumped Mr. Vocabulary with my publishing jargon. I explained that a deck is a great place to have a beer on a sunny day, and it's also the text that sits between a headline and the text of a story.

Lingo is a funny thing. The time-saving shorthand lets one easily get down to the nitty-gritty of something and sort of makes you a part of a clique. I'm wondering if people in journalism are the cool kids or the geeks. Most of us wear glasses and read a lot. Guess I'm answering my own question.

- Managing Editor Diane...off to put on some plaid pants...

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