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Fun with Words
'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
— Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll
If you regard someone as your friend, you probably feel at ease kicking
back with them, being informal, having fun, letting your hair down - gettin'
a bit crazy.
In the next few exercises, we're going to party down with words. By the
end of each exercise, you will feel a little looser around your good buddies,
those word fellas - and a little easier about asking them to go unknown
places with you.
Word Game #1
When I was a child, everyone around me cussed. A lot. I reacted against
this; I didn't cuss at all until I was well into my thirties. One of the
things I substituted for cussing was old-fashioned "cussing" - fiddlesticks
and fiddle-dee-dee, bosh and balderdash. People are startled by such uncommon
words, when they have long since become numb to more common cussing-out.
Another substitute was sheer nonsense, like,"Ratsnitz fershlugginer fahrenheit
brondstadt!" Then there was the inventive use of English. "You pullulating
excrudescence of obstreperous obfuscation!" is, to me, a far more satisfying
description of a frustrating bureaucrat than "F*cker!" Using big long
luscious words is sheer fun, whether done as inventive cussing, comic
dialogue, or purple prose.
I once wrote a parody of a certain spoken-word poetry style that uses
repetition - a lot, over and over again, with a little too much redundancy.
As a playful break, in the middle, I inserted:
Concupiscient corruption of conspicuous consumption
Consumptive concupiscience of corrupted conspicuousness
Corrupted consumption of conspicuous concupiscience
Playing with words again. It's addictive fun -- you can get quite giddy
with it.
Exercise: Big Words
Browse the dictionary for at least twenty big, gorgeous words that you have
never used before in your life, that you've never heard anybody use except
maybe one very odd professor in college. They can be big like "pullulating",
or small like "gules".
Now use all twenty in a fifty-word passage: comic, ranting, serious,
or any mood you wish. It can be poetry or prose.
Guidelines for critique:
Critiquers should also try to use big words and sound even more ridiculous.
This one is for fun.
Write On!
Anitra |
