Reaching for a word
Did you know that there is a column in The Atlantic where Barbara Wallraff posts reader requests for words that don’t exist but should? What a delightful idea!
Word Fugitives gathers suggestions for things like “a husband’s uncanny ability to ask his wife if she needs help with a household task at the exact moment that she’s finishing it.” The chosen word: afterthoughtful.
You have until Aug. 31 to come up with a word for the “seemingly universal, irresistible impulse, when faced with a dishwasher that someone else has loaded, to rearrange the dishes.” I think the impulse itself might be called “obsessive impulsive disorder” or “reorganitch,” and the impulsive person perhaps a “back-end loader” or “restructural loader.” I admit to being one, but only so I can fit in more dishes and thus not have to wash any by hand. Not that I am lazy, you understand; purely for the environmental benefits of washing a full load. Yeah, that’s it.
Enter here.
Thanks to Dan Santow’s Word Wise for pointing me to the site!
This is great. I remember the CBC once had a show that talked about these kinds of words. My fave was one for the plastic device that separates your groceries from the next person’s at the checkout: “foobar.”