Verbgasm

When I was in college, my biggest problems were hangovers and finding parking. My students seem to have to deal with so much more. Many have to work full time because their parents are unemployed, many of them struggle with learning disorders, and many of them even struggle with health issues. Consequently, I often feel sympathy for my students. But last week, I stood in front of the class and saw twenty-five pairs of eyes filled with pity directed at ME.

They were feeling sorry for me because they couldn’t believe that my life was so pathetic that I actually found the shit I was teaching as interesting as I did. You see, I tend to get really excited when I teach language awareness.

Enthusiasm oozes from me as I encourage them to take advantage of all the wonderful verbs at their disposal. I work myself into a frenzy as I ask the class, “Why use boring old walk when you could use verbs that paint a picture like lumber or saunter or parade? Isn’t skulk such a fun verb? Isn’t the verb wilt just so beautiful? ”

My enthusiasm, however, isn’t contagious. My students just stare at me with this expression that says, “Awww. The poor dear. She really needs to get a life. Maybe we should show her how to play Angry Birds.”

However, I think I actually broke through to one student. I was grading her essay today, and she used a very interesting verb in an essay about her bike:

The feeling of absolute freedom I get when I curse down the street at full speed with the wind in my hair is amazing.

Everyone cruises down the street, but cursing down the street on a bike at full speed is pretty unique.

Usually, it’s me in my car cursing at the bikers.

What About Me?

You know those times when you should be happy for someone, but their success really just makes you feel bad about yourself? For example, you should be happy for your friend when she gets a promotion, but the truth is that it just makes you mad that you didn't get one. Or you should be happy for your best friend when she tells you that her new boyfriend is whisking her off to Paris, but instead it just makes you glare at your husband.

"What's wrong, Honey?"
"NOTHING!"

Well, today, I was grading and the first sentence I read was:

The store displayed their obsequious range of holiday decorations.

An English teacher should be thrilled when her student uses such a beautiful and sophisticated word, right?

Well, not when the student out-vocabularies the teacher. I had never even seen the word obsequious before, and, what can I say, it made me feel a little inadequate.

So, you know how it shouldn’t make you happy when your friend complains that she's exhausted and has no social life because the new promotion requires her to stay at the office until 10pm every night. And it definitely should not make you happy when your best friend tells you that she spent her Paris vacation in bed due to a bad batch of escargot.

Well, what can I say; I was kind of relieved when I looked up obsequious only to discover that my student had misused it.

When I looked it up, this is what I found:

ob·se·qui·ous
1.
characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.
2.
servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.
3.
obedient; dutiful.

Surely, she didn't mean to convey that the range of holiday decorations was obedient or servile.

I hope you don't think I am being opprobrious when I say that my student was simply not exhibiting perspicacious judgement in her quest to be a sesquipedalian.

The Wrong Stuff

I did not see Boogie Nights, so my introduction to Heather Graham was her role as CIA agent Felicity Shagwell in the second Austin Powers movie. And, I hate to say it, but I thought she was the movie’s weakest link.

Why do I hate to say it? Look at that punim. She's so pretty and seems like a lovely, nice, harmless person, doesn’t she? As I was watching the movie, I felt kind of bad for her, like she was out of her league. She didn’t quite have the edge to play a CIA agent, even in a comedy. When I saw her on screen, I didn’t think highly trained government spy; I thought la la la la la la la giggle giggle.

I was so relieved when I loved her in The Hangover. She was adorable as the sweet, naïve stripper.

My career advice to her: less action roles, more fluff.

That, however, is the exact opposite advice I would give the word stuff.

(No rhyme intended)

As an action word, stuff is brilliant. It's such a strong, descriptive verb:

Austin Power's suitcase was full, but he still managed to stuff in his Swedish penis enlarger.

Using stuff shows the reader how desperate he was to take the penis enlarger along. You can almost see the sweat dripping off his brow as he's trying to get the zipper to close around (groan) the (grunt) pump. Phew! Got it!

It was a tight fit, but Austin Powers stuffed his ....

Oh, never mind.

As a noun, however, stuff does nothing for me. It sounds so cheap. One of my students just used stuff in an essay describing her wonderful mother:

My mother has done so much stuff for me over the years.

Stuff! Really? Is that the best you can do? It makes all her mother's wisdom, kindness and support seem so ordinary and blah.

In fact, in the sentence above, simply taking out stuff would make the sentence sound better.

I know that I have warned against using absolute words, but here I go: when it comes to choosing nouns, we can always do better than stuff.

Am I being too stuffy?

Sometimes Say Never

On Saturday, I was a little giddy. It may have had a lot to do with the triple latte I had just downed, but it was also because I was excited for one of the women in my writers’ group: an agent requested her manuscript and a proposal. We had even scheduled an “emergency writers’ group” meeting to help her put together her proposal. So, happy as can be, I grabbed my lap top, put it in the computer bag, forgot to zip the computer bag, threw the computer bag over my shoulder, and THUD! My lap top plummeted five feet onto a hardwood floor.

All I can say is thank goodness I heed the lessons I gleaned from Sex and the City. Because of the episode in which Carrie’s computer crashed and she hadn’t backed up any of her files, I have since backed up my files. The other good news is all I needed was a new $65 hard drive; the computer itself was fine.

The bad news is that I compromised my principles. A few months ago, I had a transaction at Best Buy that left me feeling exploited, after which I immediately called my husband and told him, “I am NEVER going to Best Buy again!” But, because it’s close to my house and I knew they would have my hard drive, Best Buy is $65 richer because of me.

You know what they say: never say never. I mean, there was a time when I said I would never get married, that I would never eat sushi, and that I would never wear high-waisted pants. You know what that makes me: a hypocrite! I have to be careful about throwing around such absolute words.

Other such words include always, all, everyone, no one.

We also have to be careful not to throw around such words when we’re writing. For example, I just read this sentence:

Everyone has a different definition of beauty.

I don’t know if that’s true. Does everyone have a different definition of beauty? I would argue that I am not the only one who considers this beautiful:

Right?

And I know that many people think this guy is the most beautiful man in the world, but, I don't know, he's just not my type:

Perhaps, it would be more accurate if we wrote:

Not everyone has the same definition of beauty.

Of course, that’s not to say that we should always avoid such all-encompassing words. I can definitively say that I have never met Johnny Depp. But, I am not going to give up hope and say that I never will.

You never know.

What Happens in Vegas?

I was walking through the Encore hotel in Vegas this weekend when I heard a female voice say, “I’m a preschool teacher.” The word “teacher” caught my attention, and since I’m nosy, I looked up and saw a woman who, judging from the length of her skirt and the size of her shirt, must have borrowed her outfit from one of her students.

What happens in Vegas? I know it’s hot and I know it’s Sin City, but from the last time I was there a couple of years ago to now, the average skirt length has halved:

And the average neck line has doubled:

Apparently, many women believe that the way to stand out in Vegas is to expose their assets.

To make our writing stand out, we also want to expose our assets. One of the greatest assets we have when writing is words. We have so many wonderful words to choose from, yet sometimes we neglect to really show them off.

For example, I can write:

Most ladies in Vegas wear short skirts.

But, short doesn’t quite capture the severity of what I experienced.

I might opt for itty-bitty or minute, or if I want to give it a more negative connotation, I could use skimpy.

Here’s another example:

Many women in Vegas showed cleavage.

But, c'mon, I can do better than showed.

How about boasted, paraded, flaunted, celebrated? Or if I want to give it a more negative connotation, I could use advertised.

Speaking of advertising cleavage, one of the things that concerns me about this new Vegas dress code is its impact on the prostitutes’ business. From what I understand, prostitution is a viable career in Vegas, yet how are potential customers supposed to discern between the prostitutes and the tourists? Another problem is that when almost everyone is wearing “shockingly” sexy outfits the shock value disappears. When I first arrived, I couldn’t stop gawking, but by casino number three, I didn’t even look up unless there was nipple.

It’s the same with writing. We want to use great words, but we don’t want to look up every single word in the thesaurus just to make our writing fancy. If all of our words are fancy, the images we really want to draw attention to may lose their impact. Also, our writing may come off as pretentious and may even be confusing. For example, after a lecture on descriptive writing, one of my students wrote:

When I was a diminutive girl, my dad used to take me fishing.

I am pretty sure she meant:

When I was a little girl, my dad used to take me fishing.

She must have looked up little in the thesaurus, found diminutive, and thought it would be more descriptive. However, in this case, little- although it may not be as flashy- makes more sense.

And since I won a whopping $35 in roulette and am now addicted, it makes sense that I start planning for my next trip to Vegas. I wonder what I can wear to stand out in the sea of legs and cleavage. Maybe something like this: