Unspoken

The door is closed, yet on my lips

Are clinging words unspoken yet.

The thought to speak the words was there,

And lips had formed their shape, but e'er

The voice and lips the thought had met

The moment vanished; silent stood the air.

Oh Lord, help my thoughts and words to meld

Inseperably with Thy will.

May, when Thy Spirit gives a thought,

That very instant the deed be wrought.

That when life is over I find not still

Thy words unspoken past the doorway brought.

Technicology

Sometimes when my mom or I are very tired, we unintentionally invent interesting new words by either trying to simultaneously say two other words, or by trying to say one word and failing miserably in the attempt. : )

Tonight Mommy was very tired, and instead of saying "technically", like she wanted to, out popped the interesting word that titles this post. I was very amused, and decided the word was a keeper.

I looked the word up on several Internet dictionaries, which, being Internet dictionaries (and free ones, at that) were not very helpful. It seems this very interesting word is one and the same with the word "technology". --Either that or the dictionaries just looked for the word that was closest and came up with technology. (I couldn't tell.)

Then I looked it up in my trusty Webster's, but, of course, it didn't appear on the pages of that venerable old resource. So, my mom and I were left to define it on our own.

My best guess at a definition would be the study of technicalities, but Mommy (still very tired) has decided that it most definitely is the study of technical colleges. : )

What do you think?

Is That Really A Word?

It all started with the word “pertinacious.” Mommy and I were pulling ivy in the front yard the other day when somehow the subject of words came up. I mentioned that I had always wanted to use the word “pertinacious” in a sentence, and Mommy asked somewhat incredulously, “Is that really a word?” I got to thinking about that, and I realized that I actually didn’t know. We then started thinking about all the funny words and phrases our family had come up with over the years.

For example, there’s “spiky bombs,” the seed balls from a Sweetgum tree with which my brother and I used to pelt each other while we waited for my sister’s piano lesson to be over. They have barbed prickles all over them, making them extremely difficult to get out of tangled hair, but they do make excellent ammunition if you happen to be playing war with your big brother. : )

From my sister, we have “flufflebugs,” which was what she called dandelion seed heads, and I think it was my brother who first coined the name “exploding grass” for a prolific weed in our backyard that would “explode” at the slightest provocation, spreading a multitude of seeds everywhere, to ensure that we would always have weeds to pull up the next year.

My nephew and nieces have come up with many good words and phrases over the years as well. When my nephew was just learning how to talk, he couldn’t quite manage to say “Aunt Gwennie”, so I was dubbed “Aunt Gooey”. (Although thankfully not for long!) He also called horses “cowies”, and the first time he saw a real deer he exclaimed “Reindeer horses!” : ) My older niece has a charming way of reversing the words in certain phrases, such as string cheese. One day, we were trying to get her to say it right, and she responded by saying, “You can say it cheese-string, or cheese-string…either way!” : ) My personal favorite from them is my younger niece’s variation on “Uncle Tris”. I tried to teach her to say it last time we were visiting, but she couldn’t quite manage, and ended up with “Uncle Sis”. : )

So, when we had finished outside I pulled out my dictionary and looked up the word pertinacious. It really is a word after all! It means obstinate, holding firmly, or stubborn. So there!