Love of Language or Love Language

Melanie likes words.
Melanie likes learning new words.
Learning new words makes Melanie smile.

I’ve always liked words and expanding my vocabulary. I think that love of language was inherited through both of my avid-reading parents. One of my Dad’s first jobs with Gannett was in the editing department, and even later while he worked in the printing department, he was forever finding typos and grammatical errors in the local papers and the USA Today.

As for my Mom, she does daily crossword puzzles and has for as long as I can remember. She loves looking up new words, and a dictionary is never far out of reach. She received a new crossword puzzle dictionary for Christmas a few years ago, but she still can’t part with the old, more familiar, tattered one, and so she uses both regularly. She and my Dad have been known to photo-copy the morning paper crossword and then both work on the same one to see which one will finish first. Makes me chuckle.

My parents love word games. Growing up, we played a lot of Boggle and Scrabble. I personally loathed Scrabble for years, probably because my parents are so good at the game, and I was often forced to participate in such a family-bonding ritual. Today, I enjoy the game and can hold my own, but my parents continue to whip me most of time. Thankfully, I’m much less likely to burst into tears over Scrabble tiles these days. AHEM! This is a big plus for all involved, believe me.

The other night I called my retired parents in Michigan just to check in and see how they were doing, and I caught them in the middle of a Scrabble game debate. Hey, Mel, can your Mom count both of the double word squares? My Mom had the word “fearing” and both the “f” and the “g” were on a double word square. I told them to look it up in the rules, but I didn’t see why it wouldn’t count. It made sense to me, which of course, was NOT the answer my Dad wanted to hear. Some help you are, kid.

I do love words, and lately, I’ve been getting my daily fix from word calendars or A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) emails. I love trying to use a new word in random conversation, which is sometimes a bit of a challenge. Today’s word made me laugh.

infundibuliform (in-fuhn-DIB-yuh-luh-form) [adjective]: funnel-shaped.

Ommmm...I love big words, and this would be a great Scrabble selection if one could remember how to spell it. Fabulous! But in conversation, wouldn’t it be just as effective and perhaps less formal for one to say “funnel-shaped”? Using it in a sentence is quite a chore...

I recently discovered that my favorite flower, the infundibuliform calla lily, was more commonly seen in funeral arrangements rather than wedding bouquets in the past century. However, today this refined and elegant species is enjoying a surge in matrimonial popularity as well.

My tongue is tied in knots now. HA! Get it? "Tied in knots" like tying the knot refers to a wedding. Completely an accidental pun. Go figure!