SPANGHEW

Spanghew. This word has made me fall in love again with the English language.

As many of you know, I have a complicated relationship with my native tongue. Compared to other languages, it seems so feeble. For instance, consider the word “love.” The ancient Greeks had a whole collection of words that we now interpret simply as love: agape, philia, storge, eros, philautia, and pragma. We have “love.” “I love my wife. I love my children. I also love Pepsi Zero.”

And so many words we have can mean one thing and the opposite. They are called contronyms. For example, “bolt” can mean to secure something so it can’t be moved, or to run away from something very fast. Weather can mean to wear away, or to endure. Refrain can mean not to do something, while a refrain is something you’re expected to do again and again.

Steve Martin said, “Some people have a way with words, while other people…..not have way.” Even though most of my life has been dealing with words, I find I often not have way. 

Eventually I stopped opening the 20-pound Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary my wife gave me a few years ago. Partly because I had given up on English and partly because the thing is a lumbar injury waiting to happen. 

And then spanghew somehow found its way to me. Spanghew, according to that same dictionary, means “to throw violently into the air; especially: to throw (a frog) into the air from the end of a stick.” 

We have a word for that? 

We have a word specifically for using sticks to throw frogs into the air? 

If I were still preaching, I would have to preach on Exodus 8:1-15 just so I could use the sentence “Egyptians and Jews, everyone from Pharaoh to Moses, spent days spanghewing.” 

There are so many words that I have completely overlooked or misused.

Defenestration- the act of throwing someone or something out the window. “You give me the urge to defenestrate.”

Syzygy- an alignment of at least three celestial bodies in a straight line. “Did you see the syzygy last night?”

Kenspeckle- conspicuous. “Mike’s attire of Dockers and a polo shirt made him kenspeckle at the Boy Harsher concert.”

Maybe I have been too hard on English. Any language that has survived long enough to have a word for throwing frogs into the air can’t be entirely feeble. There are probably thousands of wonderful words hiding in that 20-pound dictionary that I have never bothered to meet. 

And then there is the ever-popular floccinaucinihilipilification: the long, absurd act of judging something to be entirely worthless. Which, dear reader, you may be thinking of using now.

That’s okay. I have some spanghewing to do.