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by Hana Ibrahim

My Aunt Jemima is great fun. More than fun, she is an enigma. Once upon a time, when I was a kid and believed that 'infatuation' was an exotic disease, 'unpredictable' was a portentous sounding grown-up word and 'ramshackle' was a synonym for Mom's sewing machine, I thought enigma was a virulent disease slowly killing my favourite Aunt Jemima.

I remember spending sleepless nights wondering why Dad was such a phlegmatic scrooge and so so obdurate as to let his sibling die without doing something about her enigma.

This however, is not about my enigmatic Aunt Jemima, who I discovered later wasn't in the least bit anaemic. On the contrary, she was a fun-loving hooperdo who wouldn't conform to her parent's mouldy way of thinking and who with irrepressible glee often ventured into places and events that no sane adult would even deign to.

At the grand old age of 60 and bubbling with an added zest for life, she still remains an enigma, and subscribes to the belief that benign neglect is the best form of care. She inebriates her roses with a frowned upon beverage and watches them grow corpulent with neglect. But that is another story.

This in case you are wondering, is about my head-on collision with juvenile malapropism as a precocious miss-know-all and the subsequent discovery of Blackford Oaks' distinctive dictum. To the uninitiated Oaks is William F. Buckley's secret agent hero, and Buckley is to the American west coast Republican, what the Kennedys are to the east coast Democrats.

More significantly, this is also about my desperate need to determine the true meaning of 'Sir Reverence'.

I can't quite remember where I'd come across that word. But for the life of me couldn't figure out what it meant. Not at that time. Dad, who made me learn ten new words everytime I malaproped and said the wrong word at the wrong place (and believe me that was quite often) asked me not to be impertinent. I figured, he did not know it either.

My literature teacher, who considered Shakespeare to be 'Elvis-the-king-wordwise' and who made me sit through 10 boring pages of Thackeray's 'Esmond' as an indelible lesson on effrontery, said that my vocabulary was getting incondite by the day and I was fast turning into a balatron. I didn't dare ask her what incondite meant. Or balatron for that matter.

Theroux, who'd earlier made me spend over 48 hours in the library hunting for the meaning of gynaikoponarian (woman beater) didn't offer any solutions either.

But my hunt for the real meaning of these two innocuous words took me on a wacky and weirdly wonderful roller coaster ride that had me literally shrieking "Woweeee.... there's a whole new world of words out there."

A whole new world of words that were neoteric, exhilarating, esoteric, obscure, enigmatic, baffling, cryptic, mysterious, paradoxical and even obsolete. Words that were beautiful, meaningful, exciting, refreshing and exhilarating, and could so enrich our prosaic, pedestrian and bromidically blah vocabulary that borders almost on the hackneyed. Words begging to be brought out, used and savoured...

The power of neologism! I am reminded of 'Sir Reverence' (a harmless four letter word that rhymes with art) and my foray into the world of obscure words as I cogitate and ruminate how to enunciate the 1185-letter 'acetylseryltyrosylseryllsoleucyl........ a cryptic word of scientific pertinence, that describes the protein part of the tobacco mosaic virus (what ever that is).

I finally settle for 'Acetyletcetera', and hunt for my Commonplace Book for a re-scrutiny of the many alien and exotic words that I have harvested with much glee during my many forays into the world of obscure, hardly used word, and that now festoon the once pristine pages.

Some of the words that continue to fascinate me, perhaps because of their persevering relevance include:

Kakistocracy - government by the worst citizens. No comment

Ponophobia - fear of overworking. The bulk of our public servants.

Furfuraceous - covered with dandruff. May be more useful for the head and shoulders or dandax guys. Schadenfreude - enjoyment of others' misfortune. No comment.

Quoz - something ridiculous or absurd. Certain policy matters.

Putschist - one who participates in a popular uprising. Not us.

Ptochogony - a system of producing beggars or poverty. The current economy.

Tycolysis - accident prevention. Something for both motorist and the traffic police to think about.Steatopygia - having too much fat in the buttocks. Initially it was my Somali girl-pal. It could also be anyone from the adipose clan, trying to burn fact on the campaign trail.

Peudologist - a liar. All politicians.

Xenomania - a mania for foreign customs, traditions, manners. Colombo society's pretentious lot.Swelp - A perennial complainer.

Urbicolous - living in the city. Which is getting crowded.

Supervacaneous - needlessly added. Aren't many of the so deemed 'important' addenda.

Viaticum -state expense account. Heavily slashed these days. Psephology - the study of elections. A new PhD.

Wegotism - excessive use of the editorial 'we'. 'Nuff said. Big words, said Alexander Theroux, are used not to obfuscate, but clarify. I didn't much agree with him when it comes to gynaikoponarian. But Sir Reverence... I'm sure glad you came my way.

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