Today

It was a rather desultory Saturday.

What? You don’t know what desultory means? I love to throw out desultory now and then. You can see in a person’s eyes when I use a certain word, that they don’t have a clue to its meaning. They’ll just look straight at you but you can see their mind thinking, “what the hell? Desultory? It sounds like a real word but I haven’t a clue what it means. I’ll just look like I know what it means and hope I’m not quizzed on the meaning. Okay, that word was desultory…. All right I’ll look it up when I get home.”

I first heard the word desultory on HBO boxing. Jim Lampley used it. I know for a fact that no one watching knew what it meant.

When someone uses an unknown word on me I find that I can bluff pretty good. Why do we do this? Why am I embarrassed to ask the meaning of the word that I don’t know?

1 comments:

Amos said...

Hmmm, I like that word. And it fits my Saturday too. After my pleasant week, it was a little desultory on my Saturday too. Great choice, and yes, I am one of those who nod and my mind is trying to figure out what it really means. That's so dumb of me, because I love to ask questions like my 5 year old.