Fun with Words

I love playing with words (as do my daughter and grandson).

But what might even more fun than playing with words is seeing evidence of that fun being picked up by others.

For instance, I have used -- on more than one occasion -- the word "exhausticated" on this blog.

Except there is no such word as exhausticated.

It's just a stupid bastardization that I came up with years ago to describe just how very tired I am -- meaning beyond exhausted.

And lo and behold, I see this morning that someone in India did a Google search of the word "exhausticated" and was sent to my blog!

Fun, isn't it?

Now, why on God's green earth is someone googling the word exhausticated?

The word doesn't exist.  It's not a word in the English language.

At least it never used to be!

Perhaps there is someone in Vadodara, India, who is using my blog as proof positive that there IS such a word.

Sorry, whoever in Vadodara, India:  there really is no such word in the English language.

Some other words I deliberately "misuse" (but mostly in the pronunciation) include: deteckative (that's a carryonver from my father); pasgetti (my kid sister could never get her tongue around the word and that's how it came out so I've called it that ever since); brefikst (much the same story but I don't know who the first child was ...).

One of my favourite word gamers is my grandson.  He started experimenting on his own when he was about three years old (he's his mother's son, to be sure).

He would replace the vowels in words to make up new words.  For instance,  instead of calling me "Grandma," I became "Greema" -- that was a special favourite of mine.  He called me that for quite some time.

He loved playing his "replace the vowel" game.  He moved from that to rhyming games.

He rhymed constantly; nothing was safe.

I remember a story coming back from his day care when he was four years old.  He had said the dreaded "f" word at nap time that day and the teachers needed to call it to his mother's attention.

Turns out he hadn't really said the "f" word, not in the sense that it had been reported.

He was beyond napping, but he had to respect quiet time.

So he would lie there and talk to himself (that's how he went to sleep in his bed at night).

And as he talked to himself, he played his rhyme game.

On this particular day, he started with the word buck.

And went through the alphabet.

Didn't take long to get to "f" ...

And, as a second teacher who overheard the incident reported, "he just kept going merrily along through the alphabet."

So one has to wonder, why ever would someone have even thought that the child had said the "f" word under circumstances like that?

But it was funny!

Now, he's graduated to solving anagrams (and is awfully good at it!) and I hope he never loses his love of playing with words.

His Grandma certainly hasn't (but she's still exhausticated most of the time).