Transform your writing by mastering use of verbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful 2026 book by Sarah L. Kaufman titled Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to master the art of the verb and transform your writing. Google Books has a preview through page 14. On pages 6 and 7 she explains:

 

“The best verbs define intention and action, even subtle thinking action, with elegant simplicity. Let’s take a quick look at various kinds of verbs now, because understanding the difference among verbs will help you choose what’s best for what you mean to say. Making deliberate verb choices can sharpen your work. 

 

Think of three piles. The first contains ‘stative verbs,’ which are about a state of being rather than a dynamic action. They include to be and many other verbs – appear, believe, know, love, prefer, understand, and more – that describe a static situation such as existence, emotion, thought, or a condition.

 

The other piles comprise two different kinds of action verbs, which we’ll call ‘basic verbs’ and ‘verbs of manner.’ A basic verb is neutral, ordinary: The dog walks. Verbs of manner are the drama queens, descriptive and specific: The dog wiggles / waddles/ wanders. These verbs tell us the way in which an action happens, its speed, force, and feeling – its manner.

 

Verb-wise, if you write in English, guess what? It’s your birthday every day – with shopping sprees at FAO Schwarz – because English overflows with verbs of manner. It’s a special feature of the language. A secret superpower, in fact. Linguist Dan I. Slobin at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied the verbs of manner around the world, and he notes that, for example, French and Spanish each have a single verb for a jumping motion (bondir in French, saltar in Spanish). But English? It boasts at least half a dozen: jump as well as hop, leap, spring, bound, and bounce. You can probably think of more.

 

Slobin estimates that French, Spanish, Turkish, and Hebrew have just a few dozrn verbs of manner. English, however, has several hundred. (So do German, Dutch, Russian, and Hungarian.) Every language has unique features and advantages, and certainly English has its hitches (all those irregular verbs!). But with a great many verbs of manner at their fingertips, writers can express a specific action and energy with a single ford. For example, ‘The road zigzags up the mountain.’ Lively, efficient. You’d have to use a few more words in other languages: in Spanish, for instance: La carretera sube en zigz-zag por la montaña. (‘The road climbs in zigzags up the mountain.’)

 

Take advantage of this deep verb vocabulary to find the exact verb that is accurate and truthful for your purposes…”

 

And on page 89 she says to avoid ‘fancy’ verbs:

 

“STYLE TIP: Write to Shed Light in a Fresh, Direct Way

 

Do that by avoiding fancy verbs, unless you’re spoofing some pompous character or you plan a witty, ironic twist. Fancy verbs are easy to spot: they often stretch to several syllables. Replace them with clear, simple verbs. Examples of fancy verbs:

 

Ameliorate. Improve it with improve.

 

Conceptualize. This is a word turducken – a verb (conceive) stuffed in a noun (concept) further wedged into a bloated, boring verb. I railed against conceptualization in Chapter 2. Where will it all end – conceptualizationize? Better: imagine, picture, or see.

 

Elucidate. Explain says it all in half the syllables.

 

Emblazon. Blazon, without the em-, is wonderful on its own.

 

Entitle. As with blazon, adding an extra syllable – en – is unnecessary. Title suffices for the verb meaning to provide a title for, such as a book or movie. Use entitle to mean to give a legal right or claim to receive or do something.  

 

Importune. Beg or implore – yes. Importune if you find yourself dining with Lord Byron and he’s pushing his preference for vinegar and water upon you.

 

Opine. No one does this. People say, or, if they must, they state, argue, insist…

 

Utilize. Three syllables and all their attendant oxygen and time, instead of the simple, direct use – why on earth?”

 

But some women get a free pass.If your name is Amelia, you can use ameliorate. If your name is Cate (or Kate) you can use communicate. If your name is Lucie you can use elucidate. And if your name is Sue you can certainly use litigate.

 

The word cloud used  a selection of verbs ending in -ate from here at wordmom.

 

 

An inchoate Sheldon comic strip

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Sheldon comic strip by Dave Kellett on October 23, 2026 with the following dialogue:

 

Arthur: ??? You ever hear of the word ‘inchoate’?

Sheldon: Inchoate? What’s an inchoate?

 

Arthur: Exactly! There’s no way ‘inchoate’ is a real word.

   It sounds like a rash from pond water.

 

Arthur: Or a line of kelp-based organic lozenges.

   Or a distinctly French type of existential dread.

   Or an artisanal beverage made from dried chia seeds.

 

Arthur: Anyway, I refuse to look up the definition.

   Who has the time, with all the taxes we need to inchoate.

Sheldon: I inchoated an ENTIRE bean-and-cheese burrito once.

 

What does inchoate really mean? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says:

 

Inchoate (adjective):

“being only partly in existence or operation: incipient

  especially: imperfectly formed or formulated: formless, incoherent.”

 

And, similarly, the Oxford English Dictionary says:

 

Inchoate (adjective):

“Just begun, incipient; in an initial or early stage; hence elementary, imperfect, undeveloped, immature.”

 

 

A venue is an indefinite place rather than a thing, so it is a bad name for a sport-utility-vehicle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few days ago I stopped behind a Hyundai Venue at a traffic light. That is a subcompact, crossover, sport-utility-vehicle (SUV). According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a venue is:

 

“a place where events of a specific type are held.”

 

Because a venue is an indefinite place rather than a thing it is a bad name for a vehicle. Some other Hyundai names at least are for cities, definite places. A Hyundai Santa Cruz is a compact pickup truck. And a Hyundai Santa Fe is a crossover SUV. A Hyundai Tucson is a compact, crossover SUV. And a Toyota Tacoma is a pickup truck.

 

Back on July 13, 2021 I blogged about Improper plural names for single motor vehicles, particularly the Nissan Armada – a full-size SUV.

 

The image of a 2022 Hyundai Venue came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

A Sheldon comic strip about four words that start with bi-

 

 

 

 

 

 

The October 9, 2026 Sheldon comic strip by Dave Kellett has Arthur (the talking duck) proclaiming the following about four words that begin with the prefix bi-:

 

“ ‘Biannual’ makes no dang sense.

 

‘Biweekly’ means every two weeks. Or twice a week. ‘Bimonthly’ means every two months. Or twice a month. So those words are already day-drinking.

 

But out of nowhere “Biannual stands its ground and says ‘Nope. I only mean twice a year.’

 

 Then Sheldon says:

‘It’s because there’s also the word Biennial, which means-‘

And Arthur replies:

‘I am going to scream Biweekly. Guess how often.’”

 

 

Useful Phrases for Speeches is a 22-page pdf guide from the Finnish Government

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a 22-page pdf guide dated May 22, 2025 from the Finnish Government that is titled Useful phrases for speeches. Thirteen categories include:

 

Opening your speech

Presenting your topic and outlining the structure of your speech

Presenting the main body of your speech

Summarising your ideas

Closing your speech

Using hedging phrases

Giving details or showing emphasis

Expressing point of view, agreement, or disagreement

Expressing cause or consequence

Giving examples or explanations and indicating importance

Comparing ideas or showing similarity

Expressing time or place

Quoting or referring to sources

 

References include an article from Smart Words about Transition Words, and the University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank.

 

And the Finnish Government also has a 2025, 128-page pdf English Style Guide: A handbook for translators, revisers, and authors of government texts.

 

The image of a Finnish man speaking was cropped and colorized from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Ending your speech by circling back, also known as using a callback

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 21, 2022 I blogged about a Free e-book on Advanced Public Speaking from the University of Arkansas. Chapter 9 is titled Closing a Speech: End with Power and Let Them Know It is Time to Clap. Lynn Meade says to End by Circling Back to the Opening:

 

“Another type of ending is to circle back to what you said in the beginning. You can revisit a quote, share the end to an illustration that was begun in the beginning, or you can put away a prop you got out in the beginning.”

 

Similarly, an article in the April 2023 Toastmaster magazine on pages 15 and 16 titled 5 Simple Tips for Better Speechwriting says:

 

“There are two common ways to wrap up your speech. First, you can do a callback, where you refer back to the story, question, or quip you told at the beginning. Or you can summarize the three points you made in your speech (based on your outline).”

 

And there is a post at the Benjamin Ball Associates blog on June 30, 2016 titled How to End a Speech – 9 Great Examples. The first one is to Close Your Speech by Circling Back to the Beginning:

 

“Refer to an anecdote, quote, or case study from the start of your speech. Reiterate the message you want people to remember. If you can, expand on the anecdote or re-conceptualise the quote. Or provide a follow-up result from your case study. This will feel even more satisfying for your audience.”

 

Back on March 22, 2011 I blogged about Speech geometry: lines, circles, forks, and combs.

 

Images of a woman using a telephone and a circular arrow were adapted from OpenClipArt.

 

 

A Sheldon comic about three levels of insurance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a comic strip can add to both your knowledge and vocabulary. I had previously heard of reinsurance but not the next level of retrocession, as is shown above.

 

Dave Kellett’s Sheldon comic on July 15, 2026 has the following dialogue:

 

Arthur (the talking duck): You buy insurance.

 

Arthur:     But then the insurance company buys

                  ‘Re-insurance’ on your insurance.

                  As insurance.

 

Arthur:     But then that reinsurer needs 

                   their own insurance!

                  So they buy ‘retrocession,’ which is insurance

                  for reinsurers of insurance.

          

Gramp:    Dear God. It’s insurance all the way down. 

                  [An infinite regress.]

 

Arthur:     And the secret? NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 

                  POLICIES PAYS OUT WHEN NEEDED.

 

The Wikipedia page on Reinsurance says it is:

 

“…the transfer of liability from the insurance company, which issued the insurance contract, to the reinsurance company. The reinsurance company assumes some of an insurance company's liability in exchange for a payment or a portion of the insurance contract costs.^”

 

Munich Reinsurance, known as Munich Re is one example, and Swiss Re is another. Munich Re used to post an interesting quarterly magazine called Schadenspiegel (about losses and loss prevention) on their web site. Later they restricted it just to their customers. You can find their 2007 Special feature issue – Risk factor of earth as a 58-page pdf.

  

Lloyd’s of London is another somewhat different reinsurer. The Wikipedia page about them says:

 

“Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body governed by the Lloyd's Act 1871 and subsequent acts of Parliament. It operates as a partially-mutualised marketplace within which multiple financial backers, grouped in syndicates, come together to pool and spread risk. These underwriters or ‘members,’ include both corporations and private individuals, the latter being traditionally known as ‘Names’.”

 

There is an article by Ramon Berenguer at Reinsurance News on August 20, 2025 titled How does retrocession in reinsurance work? He says that:

 

“Retrocession is a reinsurance transaction where a reinsurer transfers risks of an insurance company it has reinsured to another reinsurer. The reinsurance company that takes on another reinsurer’s risk is called the retrocessionaire.” 

 

How did I learn about Munich Reinsurance? Back in 1964 Munich Re published two books (of text and plates [images]) with failure analysis case histories by E. J. Pohl titled The Face of Metallic Fractures. They were subtitled Results of Investigations on Failed Engineering Components Carried Out by the Engineering Insurance Department of the Allianz Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft.

 

In 1990 I was working in Columbus, Ohio doing consulting which included lots of failure analysis. I bought the 1988 Fatigue Design Handbook from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). On pages 297 to 330 there was Chapter 11 on Failure Analysis by David Broek which referred to E. J. Pohl’s book. Munich Re had a U.S. office in downtown Columbus, so I visited them and asked the manager whether I could buy a copy of that book. He said no, it was long out of print. But then he asked around that company, found a spare copy at another office, and mailed it to me as a Christmas present!

 

 

Overly enthusiastic use of ‘absolutely’ can sound like you’re saying the opposite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Absolutely’ is an intensifier. Back on February 23, 2014 I blogged about One-track minds: exactly, absolutely, always. And on June 14, 2024 I posted about how Hedges, qualifiers, and intensifiers are essentially weasel words which can be removed.

 

There is a Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage on July 6, 2026 titled Absolutely, and shown above slightly colorized. It cautions that enthusiastic use of that word can seem like you mean the opposite – when Hell freezes over.  

 

 

Manslaughter or Just a Man’s Laughter?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a little punctuation makes a big difference. Leaving off an apostrophe and a space turns the phrase a man’s laughter into the word manslaughter. The Pearls Before Swine comic by Stephan Pastis on April 29, 2026 has the following dialogue:

 

Pig: Did you see this guy who got arrested?

Goat: No. What happened?

 

Pig: Guess he must have been a comedian or something because he got jailed for a man’s laughter.

 

Goat: Manslaughter.

 

Pig: Oh, great, He slaughtered some man for laughing

Goat: Why do I try?

 

My cartoon is a color version of this one from Openclipart.

 

 

 

Tourons and the Disneyland Syndrome

 

 

 

 

 

Touron is a portmanteau word combining the first four letters from tourist with the last two from moron, as shown above. There is an article by Gig Morris at TheTravel on February 19, 2025 titled “Tourons” on the loose: Travelers are behaving so badly that they’ve earned their own nickname. For example, at Yellowstone National Park, they get injured after they come 11 feet from a bison rather than the recommended minimum of 75 feet. She said of touron:

 

“It sounds new, but the word can be traced to the mid-1970s within the National Park System.”

 

Another article by Katie Jackson at the New York Post on October 3, 2024 is titled Moronic tourists are ruining travel – how not to be one on your next vacation. I found the word discussed in a very profane four-minute YouTube video from Lewis Black on March 27, 2026 titled Tourists, Morons, & Lava | Lewis Black’s Rantcast Clips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I was aware of the concept long ago. In the mid-1980s my brother Tom and I had visited the Smoky Mountain National Park. We wanted to get a great view by climbing to the highest point in Tennessee, Clingman’s Dome (Kuwohi). There is a mile-long paved trail leading to the concrete observation tower (shown above) via a spiral ramp.

 

That morning the sky already was medium to dark gray, so it was not a matter of if it would rain, just when. Both of us wore jackets. I got a big golf umbrella out from my car and used it as a walking stick on the way up from the parking lot.

 

Lots of tourists on the trail were without umbrellas or even hooded windbreakers. Just as we began heading back down it began to pour. We stayed dry, but most tourists got thoroughly soaked. I later referred to their behavior as the Disneyland Syndrome – behaving as if they just were in an amusement park rather than a national park.  

 

 

Chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz explains how the Costco rotisserie chicken lawsuit is frivolous

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Vaidehi Mehta at FindLaw on February 2, 2026 titled Lawsuit over Costco’s preservative-free rotisserie chicken ruffles feathers. He said:

 

“Their legal arguments center on the idea that Costco’s ‘no preservatives’ promise is deceptive because it conflicts with how the product is actually formulated. They allege that sodium phosphate and carrageenan function as chemical preservatives (by buffering pH, chelating metal ions, reducing fat oxidation, preserving texture, and extending shelf life), so a reasonable consumer would not expect a product advertised as having ‘no preservatives’ to contain these ingredients.”

 

But when you look up the Wikipedia articles on sodium phosphate and carrageenan you will find neither is described as being a preservative.

 

Joe Schwarcz is a chemistry professor and runs the McGill Center for Science and Society. His latest article collection book from 2025 is titled Better Not Burn Your Toast: The Science of Food and Health. Another article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on February 4, 2026 is titled The Frivolous Costco Chicken Lawsuit. He begins by explaining:

 

“Let’s start with the fact that sodium phosphate and carrageenan are not preservatives! Preservatives are substances added to food, other than salt, sugars, vinegar or spices, that prevent spoilage by curbing the growth of bacteria, molds or fungi.” 

Then he goes on to explain what sodium phosphate and carrageenan are and how they function. He ends by pointing out that the high sodium content from salting the chicken instead is a valid dietary concern.

An image of a rotisserie chicken was cropped from this one at Wikimedia Commons. 

 

 

Four portmanteau words with less and more; never and ever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia says that:

 

“In linguistics, a portmanteau (also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or simply blend) is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words.”

 

The 2x2 table shown above lists those for combinations of less and more; and never and ever. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that nevertheless is an adverb meaning “in spite of that; however”, nevermore is an adverb meaning “never again,” and evermore is an adverb meaning “forever, always.” Everless isn’t in the dictionary; but instead is the title for a 2018 book by Sara Holland: Everless: A New York Times Bestselling YA Fantasy Romance of Time and Dangerous Secrets.

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The Joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrixes.

 

 

Exnovation is the opposite of innovation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 20, 2024 I posted on A comic strip about flipping prefixes from ex- to in-. The opposite direction also works. There is an article by Hector P. Rodriguez et al. at The Milbank Quarterly in 2016 (Volume 94 number 3, pages 636 to 653) titled The Exnovation of Chronic Care Management Processes by Physician Organizations whose opening states:

 

“Exnovation is the process of removal of innovations that do not improve organizational performance, are too disruptive to routine operations, or do not fit well with the existing organizational strategy, incentives, structure, and/or culture. John Kimberly first coined the term in 1981 to describe the removal process at the tail end of the innovation cycle.”

 

Exnovation isn’t either the Merriam-Webster or Oxford English dictionaries. But there is a Wikipedia page on Exnovation, and a LinkedIn Pulse article by Joanne Hagerty on June 24, 2025 titled We Need to Talk About Exnovation.

 

There is a more detailed discussion in the 2023 book by Juergen Howaldt and Christoph Kaletka titled Encyclopedia of Social Innovation (Chapter 10 page 56) which you can read here at Google Books:

 

“Exnovation ‘occurs when an organization divests itself of an innovation in which it has previously invested’ (Kimberly 1981, p. 91). Kimberly offers the example of an organization, which adopted videotape equipment to record staff meetings. Subsequently, the organization no longer actively uses the equipment, its popularity fades away, but the equipment is still there, and costs the organization space and money. Exnovation, in Kimberly’s sense is the active divestment of the innovation) i.e., here the videotape equipment), not just discontinued use. He observes that there are several reasons for exnovating; another innovation replaces the old one, for example the organization might switch to Zoom recordings, or the innovation might turn out not to be justified (perhaps, it was just a bad idea to record the meetings in the first place). The underlying reasons for exnovating might be due to beliefs about the performance of different technologies, due to imitation of other organizations, or result from a change in policy support. In short, exnovation is a rich and complex topic. It is also a topic that is widely ignored due the prevailing pro-innovation bias in innovation studies (more on this below). In a few pages of his 1981 article, Kimberly introduces exnovation along with key considerations for further development.

 

Subsequent research extended the scope of the definition beyond organizations and technology. ‘Expanding on Kimberly’s definition, we understand exnovation as the purposive termination of existing (infra) structures, technologies, products, and practices’ Heyen et al. 2017, p. 326). In this wider sense, exnovation depends on actors across social spheres. The extended definition provides a fertile soil for social innovation research since the latter calls for a shift from a reductive focus on technological change in business contexts to one on change of practices across social spheres (Howaldt et al. 2014) (- SOCIAL INNOVATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE). In light of these developments, social exnovation can be defined as the deliberate termination of social practices, and the change in goals and relations as well as materials and techniques required for this.”

  

What truculent means and why it is not spelled truckulent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 19, 2025 Pearls Before Swine comic by Stephan Pastis has the following dialogue:

 

Rat: You’re being truculent today.

Goat: What does ‘truculent’ mean?

Rat: Quick to argue.

Goat: I’m not like that.

Rat: And there you go being truculent.

Goat: I hate when he gets a new word-of-the-day calendar.

Rat: You can never argue about being truculent without being truculent.

 

And why isn’t it spelled with a ‘k’ as truckulent?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary explains:

 

“English speakers adopted truculent from Latin in the mid-16th century, trimming truculentus, a form of the Latin adjective trux, meaning ‘savage,’ and keeping the word’s meaning. Apparently in need of a new way to describe what is cruel and fierce, they applied truculent both to brutal things (wars, for example) and people (such as tyrants). Eventually even a plague could be truculent. In current use, though, the word has lost much of its etymological fierceness. It now typically describes the sort of person who is easily annoyed and eager to argue, or language that is notably harsh.”

 

A cartoon with a boy and a toy truck was adapted from OpenClipArt.

 

 

In Italian and Spanish charisma is spelled without an ‘h’ – as carisma. More of it could be called truckisma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 29, 2025 I blogged about What makes a speaker charismatic? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines charisma as:

 

“a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure (such as a political leader).”

 

And a further explanation there is that:

 

“The Greek word charisma means ‘favor’ or ‘gift.’ It comes from the verb charizesthai (‘to favor’), which in turn comes from the noun charis, meaning ‘grace.’ In English, charisma was originally used in Christian contexts to refer to a gift or power bestowed upon an individual by the Holy Spirit for the good of the Church – a sense that is now very rare. These days, we use the word to refer to social, rather than divine, grace. For instance, a leader with charisma may easily gain popular support, and a job applicant with charisma may shine in an interview.”   

 

But the Cambridge Dictionary says that both the Italian and Spanish spellings omit the unpronounced letter ‘h.’ If you play with words like me, then this spelling suggests a bogus derivation from the word ‘car’ and that more than carisma would be called truckisma, as shown above via a cartoon.

 

Cartoons of a car and truck both came from OpenClipArt.

 

Gianni Rodari’s book The Grammar of Fantasy discusses using prefixes to make up new words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in 1972 the Italian author Gianni Rodari (1920 to 1980) published a book titled Grammatica della fantasia. Earlier this year an English translation of it by Jack Zipes was published with the title of The Grammar of Fantasy: An introduction to the art of inventing stories. I particularly enjoyed reading the eighth chapter on pages 70 to 73 which is titled The Arbitrary Prefix:      

 

“One way to make words productive, in a fantastic sense, is to deform them. Children do this for fun, spontaneously, in games, which also have a serious side, because it helps them to explore the possibilities of words, to master them, by pushing them into new variations. Games, that is, stimulate their freedom as ‘speakers,’ with a right to their own personal words (thank you, Monsieur Saussure). Such play encourages nonconformity in children.

 

The arbitrary prefix was developed in keeping with the spirit of these games, and I have frequently made good use of it myself.

 

The prefix un- is enough to transform the word ‘penknife’ – a negligible, everyday object that might yet be dangerous and aggressive – into an ‘unpenknife,’ a fantastic and pacifist object that doesn’t sharpen pencils, but allows their tips to grow back when they wear down. Naturally, this would enrage stationery store owners and the ideological champions of consumerism. There are sexual allusions here, too, that are very well concealed but are nonetheless still perceivable by children, albeit subconsciously.

 

The same prefix gives us ‘coat unhanger,’ the opposite of a ‘coat hanger.’ A ‘coat unhanger’ isn’t used to hang clothes up, but rather drops them off, shedding clothes whenever they are needed. All of this takes place in a country where the shop windows do not have glass, stores do not have cash registers, and coat checks do not require claim tickets. We’ve gone straight from a prefix to utopia itself. But its’s certainly not forbidden to imagine a city in the future where coats are free as water or air. And utopia is just as educational as the critical spirit. All that’s needed is to transfer utopia from the world of the intellect (to which Antonio Gramsci rightly ascribes methodical pessimism) to that of the will (whose principle characteristic, tates Gramsci, must be optimism). In sum, even the coat hanger, as such, is only a ‘paper tiger.’

 

I also invented a country with un- in front of it, where there is an ‘uncannon’ that is used to ‘undo’ war, rather than wage it. The ‘sense of nonsense’ (this expression was coined in Italian by Alfonso Gatto) appears to me to be transparent in this case.

 

The prefix bi- gives us the ‘bipen,’ which writes everything doubly (and perhaps is useful for twin students). There is also the ‘bipipe’ for smokers who want double the pleasure, and the ‘bi-Earth’:

   

     This is a second Earth. We live on this one and that one at the same time.       Everything that stands on its head here is on its feet there. (Science fiction has already made use of similar hypotheses. That alone seems to me a legitimate enough reason to talk about this with children.)  

 

In one of my older stories, I introduced ‘archdogs,’ ‘archbones,’ and ‘trinoculars’ (a product of the prefix tri-, also used in ‘tricow,’ an animal unfortunately unknown to zoology).

 

I keep in my archives an ‘antiumbrella,’ but have not yet figured out a practical use for it.

 

The prefix de- lends itself wonderfully to destruction. Starting from this prefix, we can easily arrive at the word ‘deassignment,’ which refers to an assignment, unlike normal homework, that one does not have to do. Far from it, as the point is for the ‘deassignment’ to be destroyed or torn to pieces.

 

Returning to zoology, to free it from the parentheses in which I left it, let’s take up the ‘vicedog’ and the ‘subcat.’ I offer these animals as gifts to whomever needs them to populate their stories.

 

 In passing, I’ll also offer Italo Calvino, the author of both The Non-Existent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, a ‘semighost’ who is half-human, made of flesh and blood, and half-ghost, clad in sheets and chains, which lends itself wonderfully to stories combining moments of stupendous fear with laughter.

 

‘Superman’ already exists on comics and is a striking example of the application of the ‘fantastic prefix’ (albeit a pure imitation of Nietzsche, poor guy, and his Ubermensch). But of you want a ‘supergoalie’ (idol of the football field) or a ‘supermatch’ (capable of setting the entire Milky Way on fire), all you have to do is make them up yourself.

 

More recent prefixes, such as micro-, mini-, and maxi-, which emerged during the 20 th century seem to me to be particularly productive. Here I offer – still free of charge – a ‘microhippo,’ raised at home in an aquarium; a ‘miniskyscraper,’ which fits into a minidrawer’ and is inhabited only by ‘minibillionaires’; and a ‘maxiblanket.’ Capable of covering in winter all the people who would die of cold.

 

It's probably superfluous to point out, but the ‘fantastic prefix’ is nothing but a particular case of the ‘fantastic binomial,’ with the following components: the prefix, chosen to produce new images; and the usual word, chosen to be enobled through deformation.

 

If I were to suggest an exercise here, it would be to fill in two parallel columns with randomly chosen prefixes and nouns and then ask to randomly join them. I’ve done it myself. Ninety-nine percent of the marriages arranged according to this rite failed, but one percent resulted in happy and productive couplings.”

 

I have blogged about prefixes in a post on April 20, 2018 titled Playing with words: PRO or CON? and on December 20, 2024 in another post titled A comic strip about flipping prefixes from ex- to in-.

 

And there is an article in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella on December 7, 2020 titled The Italian Genius Who Mixed Marxism and Children’s Literature.

 

 

 

 

What the heck is a mountweazel?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been looking through a 2025 book by Martha Barnette titled Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland. A mountweazel is a phony entry put into a reference book in order to catch plagiarists. On page 293 Martha says:

 

“Such copyright traps aren’t limited to dictionaries and encyclopedias. Cartographers have been known to insert nonexistent features such as so-called trap streets and paper towns in their maps to catch anyone stealing their work.

 

The word mountweazel derives from a bogus entry in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. The entry describes Lillian Mountweazel, supposedly a promising young photographer from Bangs, Ohio, who met an untimely end. Clearly someone had fun writing it:

 

‘Mountweasel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-73, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio, Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972). Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.’ “

 

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, I noticed that the Gulf Oil map of the city contained a trap street in Schenley Park – a bogus connection between Schenley Drive and West Circuit Road.

 

And when I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity printed and sold the student directory. Anyone who tried to use that publication for a mailing list got a cease-and-desist letter from the attorney for Alpha Phi Omega. A friend of mine told me that one mountweazel used his actual home address along with the fictitious name Wadza Duckworth (What’s a duck worth?). Another mountwezel was a phony address for a real person in what now is Wean Hall. It was a room number for the telephone equipment closet in the back of another room.

 

The mountain cartoon was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.