Some Words and What I Remember About Them.

Some words I like and where I first encountered them.


Ensorcelled
To enchant or bewitch. I had never heard this word until it was used on The West Wing by Bradley Whitford’s character Josh Lyman. Of course, Aaron Sorkin wrote the wrote into Josh’s mouth and – as is his style – he used it like a diamond and then tossed it off, with nary a moment’s thought. That small, singular moment of glimmering is what language can do best. It only lasts for just the second, but that second can burn with the heat of a nova if the chemistry of words is in the right order. Anyway, I was bewitched by this word. Speaking of which . . .

Ephemeral
Lasting a very short time. This is one of those words that seems to come up every day when you’re an English mjor but which is never encountered out in the wide wilds of the world. While it is only meant to describe something as fleeting, I have always understood it to imply a grandness and a sadness all at once. As if in describing something this way, we are remarking on how saddened we are to see it go.

Cloying
My Ex, Violet, used this word in an email once and I had to rush to a dictionary. She was describing herself and her fear that she was being cloying, but simply by using the word, it made me love her more. That was back in the good old days.

Autodidact
A self-taught person. I first heard this word in Professor Martin Pousson’s class at CSU Northridge (Pousson is a phenomenon of nature in and of himself, both flamboyantly and badassedly gay all at once, he invents his own paradigm). He used this word to describe Jorge Luis Borges and when I heard it I felt like I had finallt been given a proper Christian name. I used to make the lame English Department joke that I was an autodidact but I had to go back to school to learn that word.

One-off
One of a kind or limited to a single time. One of my bosses at work has a habit of saying this when she is talking about something unique and since I had never heard it before this job, I had no fucking idea what the hell she was talking about. Unfortunately there is a part of my brain that thinks it would be rude to be all, “What the hell are you trying to say right now?” Apparently its derivation is wrapped up in English slang. Anyway, I use it all the time now.



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