By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Ironically, it was the language that got my attention more than the message on my answering machine last week:

“Hey, how about a correction on the front page! I'm getting teased mercilessly about the years you added to my age. It's not like you to get something wrong, but this is an egregious error!”

I flipped to the story I wrote about walkers in training for marathons, and there it was, a mistake in the number of years I gave a woman who also happens to be one of my best friends (or was). Checked the copy on my hard drive. Yep, there it was. No way can I blame anybody else. So, I go beyond company policy, which is to make corrections in at least as conspicuous a location as the original blunder appeared, and herewith make this one on page 1C instead of 3B: Viki Brigham is NOT 68.

What really lit up my circuits was her use of that yummy word “egregious.” It's so seldom used that I looked it up to be sure I understood it correctly. It's also perfect in this context on several levels.

First definition is archaic: “remarkable.” Of course. My error was remarkable — for its rarity, I would hope. The second definition is “outstanding for undesirable qualities, remarkably bad, flagrant,” and my thesaurus goes on to include synonyms like blatant, glaring, unmitigated. I'm sure that's what Viki meant, not “remarkable.”

(Most interesting of all is that its Latin root, “egregius,” means “separated from the herd, hence select.” Now my friend, a former newspaper editor and a precise writer, might not have used “egregious” if she'd remembered that she was photographed for that article in the midst of what can only be described as a herd of walkers.)

Words like “egregious” may occur in print, but too seldom in speech. Another that took me aback recently was Peachtree City municipal guru Betsy Tyler's conversational use of the word “untoward.” I don't think I'd ever heard it used in speech before. She was repeating to a city official his declaration that some foam on Flat Creek was harmless. “You're saying this will have no untoward effects downstream,” Betsy said thoughtfully, and I was so impressed I forgot about the foam.

In March, visiting my daughter in Germany, I kept in touch with home by e-mail, and one day received a letter from a friend who knows how much I love words. “I thought of you today,” she said, “when I had to go to the dictionary for two words, both in the first paragraph of an article — `chthonic' and `scrofulous.'”

It seemed that in whichever of Mary's apartments I was staying, the one in Cologne or the one in Gelsenkirchen, her English dictionary was at the other. But eventually I found out what the unfamiliar words meant, and wrote Marquita back and advised her to find something else to read. The subject matter sounded very depressing. That, and the fact that I did a lot of reading during that trip, got me started keeping a list of challenging words I came across, words that sent me to a dictionary that was sometimes 35 miles away.

Now, I like to think of myself as more than adequately literate, but sometimes a word out of context stumps me. Here are a few more, plus one non-word to watch out for. Don't worry; I'll give you definitions. I thought I knew what “scurrilous” means, but checked on it, and then, believe it or not, I came across this one in a novel and simply boggled: “solipsistic.”

When I corrected my daughter Jean on her pronunciation of “hectare,” I suddenly got that wavery, uncertain feeling that invariably means I'd best consult a dictionary, and was glad I did. I'd have sworn it had three syllables.

Which of the following expressions have nautical origins? 1. Down the hatch. 2. Leeway. 3. Go by the board. 4. In the offing. 5. Bitter end. 6. Taken aback. 7. Stranded. 8. Three sheets to the wind. I've said it before: Words are my toys as well as my tools. Would that I were as precise with ages.

Definitions: untoward — not favorable, adverse, unseemly; chthonic — (pronounced something like “thon-ik”) dark, primitive, mysterious; scrofulous — like or having scrofula, a nasty-sounding disease characterized by enlarged glands in the neck, suppuration, and scar formation; scurrilous — using indecent or abusive language, vulgar, foulmouthed; solipsistic — from solipsism, the theory that nothing exists but the self; hectare — (pronounced like “hek-ter”) a metric unit of land or 100 ares (which is pronounced “ar” and is equal to 100 square meters).

All the numbered expressions have nautical origins, according to Robert S. Lee in “English from the Sea,” published in SPELL/Binder, March-April 2000: 1. Safely stowed away. 2. To have leeway meant having room to maneuver between vessel and lee shore to avoid being driven into it. 3. Abandoned, as a mast that fell overboard when shot away or carried off in a gale. 4. When a vessel coming into harbor is visible some distance offshore. 5. The end of a rope nearest the bitts (strong attachment posts) on the ship. 6. A vessel was taken aback when a sudden shift of wind struck the back side of the sails, often with unpleasant consequences. 7. The land between low and high tide was the strand; a ship that wound up there was stranded. 8. Sheets are the ropes that control the sails; if they are flapping free, the vessel is wallowing like a staggering drunk. The non-word “wavery” is not in my dictionaries.

Back to the Top of the PageBack to the Weekend Home Page