Pre-Ramble:  I have always loved words and as a person who uses them on a regular basis, a recent conversation between University of Minnesota faculty member Anatoly Liberman and MPR’s Kerri Miller about stand-out words from 2010 caught my ear. 

Fulbright Scholar, McKnight Fellow, BBC commentator and all-around wordy guy, Anatoly did his best to deliver a rollicking good take on word origins and usage, while steadfastly maintaining the requisite prim and bookish demeanor. As expected, his vocabulary was rich with varietals and his delivery impeccable.  You could hear his pinky extended from the teacup through the radio.

Refudiate.  Apparently, the folks over at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) annually scan the 2 billion plus words flying around in our collective lexicon to select new ones to add to the dictionary’s roster of over 600,000 entries. More than 2,000 new items were added or revised this year   including “vuvuzela” (that long, super-annoying plastic horn wielded by fans at soccer tournaments) and “staycation” (lame, money-saving holiday spent at home). 

But wait — there’s more!  Clearly, the OED has made a conscious attempt to be more trendy and relevant.  A peek at their website reveals several new online features including topical word references, historically significant words, and even the uber techy-geeky “word cloud” …

Each month we offer an example of a new feature of the OED Online in action … This month we consider the changing language of ‘youth’, celebrate words served up at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, remember John F. Kennedy’s speech fifty years on, and count the change from 1000 years of banking and finance …

… the Historical Thesaurus of the OED, which provides a fascinating insight into how English has been used in the past, … charting the development of English over 1000 years … discover synonyms for individual words in the OED (and then trace their development over time), and chart the linguistic progress of a chosen object, concept or emotion, …  January’s word cloud is made up of historical synonyms for youth—from ‘frumberdling’ (c.1000) to ‘studmuffin’ (1986).

The Take-Away:  Let’s face it, words can be a ton of fun. I’m telling you, there is nothing more entertaining than listening to Professor Liberman respond to a caller on the entomology of the ”slangy expression” “junk.”  (Also discussed at length by Ben Zimmer in the NYT Magazine’s On Language column.) 

Post-Note:  FYI – there is even an alternate hip meaning for the word “word” … in street vernacular it means something like, “I hear you” … “I get it” … “Yup” … “Yo” … “I concur with your assessment” … It’s kind of a short verbal thumbs-up or fist bump.

Pre-Ramble: Every couple of days or so, I come across a piece of writing that is so poetic, insightful and clever that I wish I had written it. 

It’s usually something by James Wolcott in Vanity Fair, or Martha Beck in O Magazine, or anything in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Interestingly, at least to a wordsmithing wannabe like me, some of the funniest, or I should say “punniest” turns of phrase show up in the Wall Street Journal. Front page headlines, even those heralding weightly matters, are regularly laced with double entendre.  And now that the Journal has a sports page, they have virtually run amuck.

Take an article in Monday’s sports section about the controversy surrounding the decision made by the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA), the governing body of competitive swimming, to ban “performance enhancing suits” (PES) or “supersuits” the fabric and fit of which “can improve speed, buoyancy and endurance.”

Now, I’m not a big swimmer. In fact, I don’t really care for swimming. … Ok, I loathe swimming … I don’t even like to get wet. That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like swimming more if I could wear one of these sleek, spandex, full-length suits, especially if they come with a built-in control panel in the ab flab zone and can net me a couple of gold medals.

Anyway, this supersuit article (by Allen Barra) was just dripping with water puns, four of which I must share with you now:

From now on, FINA has dictated, swimmers will sink or swim in suits made of traditional textiles.”

The prohibition doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2010, but it’s already created ripples in the swim world.”

Sports purists counter that such arguments don’t hold water.”

[Even] for those of us with kids who don’t dream of Olympic medals, the FINA decision will have a trickle-down effect.”

The Take-Away:  Allen, I am not worthy. Even if I were to plumb the depths of my vocabulary, I wouldn’t be able to match the superior caliber of style, finesse and punsterismness that you demonstrate in your work.  

Post-Note:  It might be a stretch … and I might be in over my head here, but I’m not going to let the fact that I’m still wet behind the ears when it comes to writing dampen my enthusiasm.  Just because I’m an amateur doesn’t mean I can’t float the occasional bad pun or flip remark. (My only regret here is that I wasn’t able to work in the word “hosed.”)