Recently in Choice Vocabulary Category

Having returned from a salubrious vacation on the Continent, involving the most minimal of hospital stays (it is true what they say about Old Country hospitality), I am pleased to return to our series on words that sound much more vulgar than they actually are.

When casting about for an epithet, the animal kingdom offers a number of alternatives to the tired simian, jackass, pig, and snake. For example, the insect world offers us hellgrammite, a word of uncertain origin that is familiar to fishermen as a name for a dobsonfly larva. It is variously spelled hellgrammite, hellgramite, or hellgamite, but in any spelling it is the initial hell- that grabs our attention.

Encountering this word, one is initially reminded of hellspawn, hellhound, and hellhag, a term which has suprisingly not yet made it onto t-shirts for the nation's tweens. The ultimate syllable -mite suggests something classically unsavory, along the lines of catamite. This combination renders hellgrammite a potent contributor to nigh-Shakespearean imprecations.

The Genilman: Lookin' good there, girl!
The Lady: Aroint thee, hellgrammite!
The Genilman: . . . That's cold, baby, cold.

In this regard, hellgrammite excels beyond the North American giant salamander, or hellbender, which once bequeathed its name to a shoot-em-up video game. One supposes that 'Giant Salamander' wouldn't quite have the same cachet in the gamer community.

The Geek Chorus: Dood! That game was weak!
Myself: Was it now?
The Geek Chorus: Totally. The game engine was creaky, the frame rate blew. You're in a fighter, so there's no hand-to-hand. Waste of time.
Myself: I see. And exactly how old were you in 1996?
The Geek Chorus: Well. . .
Myself: I think that someone's been googling old reviews again.
The Geek Chorus: Well, whatever. Install's nearly over, so later, man.
Myself: Goodbye.

Our regular word maven and arbiter of usage is currently vacationing on the Cote de Merde in Lower Normany. Instead of his usual finely-crafted column, we present the following transcript of one of his recent collect calls to the office. —Ed.

Hello? Can you hear me now? Hear now? Here? OK, OK. I just had to call, I know, it's my vacation, but I've made an incredible discovery:

English is no longer the language of international business. It is the language of universal lurve.

What? Of course I've been drinking, I'm on vacation! I could write a proud column on the semantic range of vacation these days, but my research has not been for the weak or overly scrupulous. Vacation is returning to its Roman roots as a great exemption, a freedom from duty, a wide-ranging dispensation from mundane morality. It is the key to the gates of Sodom itself! It is. . .

English! Yas! The language of pure passion, crystallized in arbitrary spellings! The language of empire, now sublimed and subverted into the panting tongue of. . . what?

The point? You cannot speak English for more than a few seconds before making a boner. That is, alluding or being taken to allude to a rude act. As a result of the vibrant, pulsing culture of the English-speaking world, the entire language has taken on a ruddy tinge, wetly warming the ears of innocents abroad.

An example: I was lingering in a café last night over a glass of chartreuse, when the local chantootsie chose to sit down at my table. I lit her cigarette and admired the flame in her dark eyes. She has a magnificent, full vibrato, and as I was framing the perfect compliment on her singing, I caught myself staring openly at her tittles.

Now, as I must have told you, I suffer from a rare congenital disorder. I'm ultralexic— when I see something my mind is immediately filled with the words it corresponds to, usually in a largish sans serif font. It's like being surrounded by billboards that walk and talk and occasionally sit down at your table, looking otherwise like a beautiful, soft dream.

Anyway, she was there, across the small table and delicately sucking on her cigarette. She smiled at me, and I struggled for words as her magnificent tittles filled my vision. Her name was Chloë, and all I could see was her perfect dieresis: those two circles of black, round and full, floating over her sensual, curved e.

I fought to gather myself, stifling a small cry. I had never been so close to a lady so diacritically perfect. I hungered to press her vowels to mine, but I hesitated, uncertain of her feelings. I ventured a formal homage:

"Mademoiselle, you have moved me as I have never been moved before. What the moving finger of the poet has writ in you, has never been written so well or so beautifully. Accept me as your humble worshipper, who takes as his altar the incomparable glory of your tittles!"

The next thing I felt was a decent red wine burning my eyes, followed by glass breaking against my forehead. In the background, glowing in lines of fire, was a gutter French so excoriating in intent that I involuntarily shrank in my chair to protect my vitals. Hurriedly mopping my face with the tablecloth, I painfully focused on the enraged lady and stood to take my leave:

"Écorché, Mademoiselle."

I then winged my chair at her and quickly escaped to a taxi stand outside. It's simply impossible here not to get ladies overexcited by speaking plain English, and at my age, French lovemaking is likely to be fatal. This much I've learned. Hi to the old Glob for me, I've gotta run. Bye-o!

One of the hazards of using impressive words is accidentally reaching for the wrong one in the heat of disputation. It can be difficult to maintain the proper command of meanings when several little-used and unusual terms sound sufficiently similar to each other. More to the point, misuse of a big, fancy word will disastrously undermine the aura of learned intelligence that you are attempting to put over on your interlocutors.

I would thus be remiss in recommending last week's word, lugubrious, if I did not note a few other terms that are easily confused with it, such as lucubration and lubricous. It is essential to guard against confusion at all times, since using a word such as lubricous to describe a friend's mournful aspect will strain even a fast friendship.

lucubration refers to a solitary activity known only too well to every editor of The Glob. It derives, like so many of the snootier words in English, from the Latin. To lucubrate is to work by candlelight, and connotes the labors attendent on study or scribbling far into the night. The initial luc- is from lux, light, an element familiar from charming baby names such as Lucille and Lucifer. This happy association captures some of the essential pleasures of lucubration, which can be used to refer both to the act of burning the midnight oil itself or to the literary works produced by such toil.

Mrs. Bizzy: What do you think of our new vicar, then?
Mrs. Boddy: Hm.
Mrs. Bizzy: Isn't he wonderful? So young, and such the intellectual!
Mrs. Boddy: He's something shocking all right.
Mrs. Bizzy: I beg your pardon? Did you know he's writing a book on the divine body of the scriptures?
Mrs. Boddy: That does not surprise me in the slightest: he's carnally inclined.
Mrs. Bizzy: He's what?
Mrs. Boddy: He propositioned me.
Mrs. Bizzy: What? Vicar Glandstone?
Mrs. Boddy: After the Bible study group last week, I asked him for recommendations of further readings on the incorruptibility of saints both pre- and post-mortem. He pretended to have written something apropos the subject, and then he baldly asked me to call at the vicarage later so he could show me his lucubrations.
Mrs. Bizzy: Oh my goodness! What did you do?
Mrs. Boddy: I was utterly astonished at being addressed in such a fashion, so I bid him a hasty good day after kicking him in the shins.
Mrs. Bizzy: My, my, another lost soul, seething with cruel lusts. He seemed like such a nice, quiet man.
Mrs. Boddy: My dear, those are exactly the sort of people you need to watch.

In contrast to the upright, though perhaps pedantic, associations of lucubrations, the word lubricous is more suspect. A lubricous entity is characterized by lubricity, a smoothness or slipperiness that may be caused or enhanced by lubrication. A state of lubricity is therefore tricky and potentially treacherous. As an extended meaning, this term connotes lewdness, lechery and related entertaining vices. There is therefore a nice distinction between a lubricous glance and a lugubrious look that must be understood before employing either term in anger.

The Geek Chorus: Alright, dood, enough. I surrender.
Myself: I beg your pardon?
The Geek Chorus: You're the alpha male, OK? Chief BigWord.
Myself: Are you finding this presentation tedious?
The Geek Chorus: Well, your dictionary kinda stops on the first syllable, if you know what I mean.
Myself: . . .
The Geek Chorus: No offense, but there are limits. Some of us have stuff to do.
Myself: Ah, yes. I see.
The Geek Chorus: Seriously, man. I have work to do tonight.
Myself: And are your parents aware that your nocturnal, lucubratory activities are largely lubricous in nature?
The Geek Chorus: What?
Myself: You know what I mean. You're busy playing on the Shame Grid. What's your handle? The invincible Pr0n, who surfs for the Lusers?
The Geek Chorus: Man, I'm outta here.
Myself: Goodbye.