Like many of you (and I know I’ve even blogged about it here before), I delight in finding words new to me. Without being boastful, lemme just say I have a large vocabulary. Which is why it’s so much fun to find new words. And now another generation has joined the fray: My son.

Yesterday, we did some back-to-school shopping. At the counter, I picked up a pocket dictionary for the boy because lately he’s been asking me what words mean, and I want him to be able to find them on his own. Mommy doesn’t always know for sure what the words mean, and I don’t want to lead him astray.

On the way back to the car, I showed it to him, he made a sound of glee, and immediately dove into it. His first word to look up? Despondent. Apparently a supervillain has that as his last name, and he wanted to know for sure what it meant. And then, little nihilist that he is, he looked up ‘death.’

Me, I had to text a friend to define “ichor,” which is the blood of Greek gods, rumored to be in ambrosia. I couldn’t wait for a regular dictionary, and it wasn’t in the son’s, and it was driving me crazy. And then I looked up “coruscate,” which was there, which means sparkling. Both those words were in the book I was reading.

I like interesting phrases, too; we are at the Jersey Shore (“down the Shore,” for those in the vernacular know), and we always go to a candy store that has “own make” candies.

My husband and I talk a lot in shorthand, citing phrases and lyrics that have come to mean something particular to us. It’s fun being married to someone as word-geeky as I am, although it’s REALLY ANNOYING when one of us uses a word incorrectly, and the other one corrects her.

What are your shorthand phrases? Or favorite idiosyncracies? What word did you look up most recently?

(And apologies for not coming back to comment last week and this, I am on dial-up down the Shore, it’s hard to get online).

Megan