Flibbertigibbet and other tongue pleasing words

Long Words

I love long words. They feel so wonderful after your tongue completes the complex and intricate maneuvers that get each word out of your mouth.  Antidisestablishmentarianism, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, deoxyribonucleic acid , Greek last names.  They are all so tactile.  You feel like such a rhetorician when you manage to insert each multi-syllabic mouthful into a sentence.

But wait a minute

Unfortunately, these words either have very specialized meanings that are hard to insert into normal conversation or they don’t mean anything at all.  Try parsing antidisestablishmentarianism. It apparently actually means something but you would never know it from its construction. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, according to Disney Studios means “Something to say when you have nothing to say.”  I might add, when you have nothing to say and you want to say it with flair.  Deoxyribonucleic acid – we might actually be able to use that one these days since it is so important on crime TV shows except for the damnable tendency these days to turn any word longer than two syllables into letters.  Deoxyribonucleic acid has been downgraded to DNA.   No fun there.  And Greek last names.   Let’s face it, the world needs more Greeks.  Compare the delicious name Tsakopoulos with the ordinary Smith or Jones– even the more exotic Carlson.   Which one does your tongue prefer?

But I digress

What got me started on this homage to long words was a not so long word but one that still flits provocatively off the tongue,  Flibbertigibbet.   It is fun to say, has a real meaning and you can use it today.  It means “ a flighty or whimsical person.”  Someone who behaves in a higgledy piggledy fashion which is to say confused or unorganized.

Finally, the point

You see I struggle daily to maintain the image of a focused, goal-oriented individual while trying to mask the reality that underneath the facade is a flibbertigibbet whose natural tendency is to make daily decisions in a higgledy piggledy fashion.  At the moment this effort has exhausted my will and I feel an uncontrollable urge to waste 3 hours on Facebook but I do really want to explore this in depth sometime.  Maybe tomorrow.