Words worth

There was a time when a friend of mine was preparing for the GRE and he bought himself a book by Barrons. It was told to him that apart from math’s he needs to work on his vocab and some 3500 words of barrons was more than enough for him. (Here I would like to tell you in advance that it was as thought he has a queue type memory. You know first in first out with limited storage space. This meant that he would memories a word, and in doing so forget a older word he had learnt once.) So he embarked upon a journey to learn all the words in that book and in the same time forgetting what ever he had learnt till then. This of course was a nuisance as he started asking for the meaning of the words commonly used in day today life. Words like “imposter”, “stoop”, “triumph” and some times words like “being”. Now explaining the 1st set is easy, but how do we explain “being”. And that to when the person is adamant that we tell him the dictionary meaning.
One fine day when we were blabbering something on success and failure, my newly enlightened friend spoke up:
Frnd1: Failure is not a word that is present in my LEXICON.
Me: You mean your dictionary.
Frnd1: No! I mean Lexicon
Frnd2: What’s that?
Frnd1: (now with a bright smile and a look that meant we are a useless lot) Lexicon is what lexicologist writes.
Frnd3: (rolling his eyes… actually we all were rolling ours) and who is this lexicologist.
Frnd1: Makes that book with all the words and meanings in that.

By this time we all were frustrated and we left him to him.

There was one more incident that happened and this time Frnd3 wanted to know a meaning of a word. (Now let me point out here that we are a lazy lot and we can’t open up a dictionary (Read Lexicon) and see the meaning but we ask the person working on words (Read lexicologist).) The word in question was “Evanescence”. This was an easy word for Frnd1 doing all the mugging up of words and he said promptly. “Fugacious”
Frnd3 was perplexed and asked very politely along with some swear words what this new word meant. This time Frnd1 was in a fix for some time but then with twinkling eyes he said “Ephemeral”.
Frnd3 had given up hope but just for the heck of it asked Frnd1 again to explain all the 3 words. This unfortunately my Frnd1 didn’t know.

Result: Frnd3 beat Frnd1 up and I help Frnd3.

After getting beaten up many times my friend Frnd1 had stopped showing off his words worth powers. Good habits are hard to break! And so one fine day to some conversation Frnd1 said, “Oh! I know that’s an oxymoron”. Without missing a beat another friend pipes up “No! That’s not an oxymoron you are. You and an Ox and a Moron”

There are many more such instances but let me stop here before the post becomes too long.

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