In the Corridors of My Mind

In the Corridors of My Mind

For the past year, I have a new challenging hobby: factoring out as many words (similar or not) as I can from a given word I have randomly chosen. For at least a week, I keep finding extra entries. Some of them I conjure up on my own; others I retrieve from dictionary websites.

Yesterday, I was walking in my condo corridor in order to pamper my injured big toe. Within a minute, I thought of finding more items (at least four-letters long with no plurals ending in “s”) to the word redactions. My chart was so crowded with hundreds of notations that I doubted I could come up with any more material.

But suddenly I triumphed. Two more words flashed in my mind: erotica and caries. I had already listed erotic; adding an “a” to the end of the word was a bonus. Just at that moment, I contemplated my next dental visit. Eureka! I have been cavity free for years: no more “caries” for me. The word caries, although ending in an “s,” is singular. There is no plural alternative.

Because I did not want to forget my two new additions, in each case, I interrupted my walk to jot down the words that I had discovered serendipitously.

It’s never boring to walk anywhere as long as I allow myself to listen to whatever linguistic tidbits ricochet in my mind.

As long as I can overcome my minor cognitive deficiencies,   language games will never languish with me. My vocabulary will continually flourish, providing the soil that I have tilled as a committed wordsmith for half a century, hammering out letters to the editor, vignettes, and lay sermons.