This Week in Word of the Day 4/7/13

ha-ha \HAH-hah\, noun:

sunk fence.

After the doors broke down and the enraged peasantry flooded through, the young girl fled into the fields. She knew what her father had done, it was all her mother could talk about.

“That man will finally be the death of us,” her mother gasped as they saw the mob approaching with scythes, axes and clubs.

The girl was the only one to have slipped through the madness after a dark man with a butcher knife smeared with blood nodded her toward the back door.

Now, with the screams of her family screeching out across their ancestral estate, the girl sprinted barefoot through the grass still gleaming from the morning dew. She dove over the stoned ha-ha and pressed against the cold wall. Following its ridge, she crawled toward the stables, but froze when she heard their voices, growling in an angry, ugly dialect her father derided as “impenetrable, sloppy, and indicative of people barely an intellectual rung above sheep.”

She clung to the ha-ha, squeezing against the wall so tightly she hoped she would pass through the stone and into the earth where she would never be found.

“I have smelt that perfume before, girl,” a man growled from above. “It’s what your daddy buys the whores that survived him to keep them quiet.”

Her face trembled, she held onto every small breath in terror. Then, just a few inches above her, she heard the man whisper:

“You’ve born into a wicked family, my dear, and we are pulling it out by the roots.”

splenetic \spli-NET-ik\, adjective:

1. irritable; peevish; spiteful.

2. of the spleen; splenic.

3. Obsolete. affected with, characterized by, or tending to produce melancholy.

Astonishingly nimble, despite the creeping arthritis, the ancient juggler mystified children visiting the park between the hours of 2-4 pm with his amazing skills honed over seven decades. The children awed as he hurled up to seven balls, five clubs and twelve rings – if the wind was calm. Yet, they stood their distance, quickly learning that the juggler was foul and splenetic when approached by strangers.

A few parents attempted casual conversation, but were only greeted with a dismissive eye and a sharply tuned “humpf”.

The old man remained an enigma for years and, as the crowds swelled with anticipation, he never failed to impress.

In time, his fabulous skills began to falter and he would scale back to five balls, then four, then three. Then he disappeared.

Upon a young nurse’s first day at a rest home, she encountered the mysterious man gazing out of the front window. Among her barrage of questions, he only responded to one:

“You were so wonderful, but you would not let any of us close to you. Why? Please tell me!” she gasped, now nearly at tears.

“I have lost too many for one lifetime, I could not bear the thought of loving another. But it was still important for me to be loved.”

aperture \AP-er-cher\, noun:

1. an opening, as a hole, slit, crack, gap, etc.

2. Also called aperture stop. Optics. an opening, usually circular, that limits the quantity of light that can enter an optical instrument.

As the aperture narrowed on the dying human, the gigantic robot amazed at the way the man’s heat signatures swayed and dipped like the retreating tides, the way his brain sparked in desperation like a pilot trying to save his starship, the way his eyes gazed up into the heavens, pleading for help from someone who could not be there.

In that moment, the robot felt confusion, uncertainty, and even something akin to pity. He turned to his army sweeping in from the heavens and held up his massive, mechanical hands.

“Stop!” the robot’s harsh, digital voice boomed. “These animals do not live as we do, and they do not die as we do! They do not stop functioning in hopes of repair, they extinguish like a drowning flame! We must reassess this war until we understand what we are losing with each human’s death!”

The robot soldiers stumbled to a stop and looked up to their brave general. The fortified human military huddled into their holes on the other side of the battle lines held their fire and prayed.

“Well,” one smaller yellow robot called out, hand raised timidly in the air. “Does that also mean there will be no anal probes?”

“No, of course there will be anal probes,” the general responded with a delighted laugh. “That’s just science.”

ingratiate \in-GREY-shee-eyt\, verb:

to establish (oneself) in the favor or good graces of others, especially by deliberate effort (usually followed by with): He ingratiated himself with all the guests.

It helped, no doubt, that the young man was beautiful, but many stunning faces had been locked out of the tight-knit band of artists and intellectuals roaming the streets of Vienna. One could not ingratiate themselves with these mighty, pretentious minds easily, yet the young man seemed to slip into their fold like a hand into a silken glove.

You see, it was the way he talked about everything and nothing with complete delight that stole their hearts. His mind flowed like an winding brook, tumbling effortlessly from one topic to the next with no hesitation or filter. That zeal to which he recounted the highs and lows of his wide open life was entrancing.

Locked away in sheltered privileged for so long, they never thought to talk openly about the subtle nuances of constipation and impotence, of bumbling through prostitutes sock drawers to find money for a cab ride home, inadvertently bedding transexuals, climbing down into outhouse sewage pits to hide from enraged boyfriends, or of self-diagnosing and treating venereal diseases. Yet he relished every moment of the wild adventure equally.

A man of so few years who lived so much and showed no shame of it was intoxicating to those who thought so highly of their own existence, but had nothing to show for it.

codicil \KOD-uh-suhl\, noun:

1. any supplement; appendix.

2. a supplement to a will, containing an addition, explanation, modification, etc., of something in the will.

Sam could not understand why his younger brother, Waldo, would have his father add, in a codicil, that Waldo would receive the vast collection of aluminum foil balls upon the father’s death. The brothers has always joked about the insane obsession, but now that Waldo had moved to take over the oddity, Sam began to rethink the collection’s value.

As his mind spun, Sam only became more confused, then angry. In a heated phone exchange, Sam accused Waldo of thievery and disgracing the nobility of the family line. Sam called his lawyer and ordered an investigation of the circumstances of the codicil. Sam refused to stand in the same room with Waldo until he agreed to have the collection professionally appraised.

Waldo, of course, thought it was all just hilarious.

idiolect \ID-ee-uh-lekt\, noun:

a person’s individual speech pattern. Compare dialect (def. 1).

A king of small talk, the ancient gas station owner was a relic of a time when refueling a car was a full service experience. His sons took over the maintenance shop long ago and a grandson squeegeed the windshields, leaving the old man free to shuffle out of the shop and chat up customers with his eccentric idiolect filled with rapid fire and innocent one-liners, a bottomless well of nicknames, and a high pitched and delighted giggle.

It was widely known that the man had been diagnosed with lung cancer and been given six months to live, but that was seven years ago and the old man savored each handshake and each new face like a drowning man gasping in a fresh breath of oxygen.

demimonde \DEM-ee-mond; Fr. duh-mee-MAWND\, noun:

1. a group characterized by lack of success or status: the literary demimonde.

2. (especially during the last half of the 19th century) a class of women who have lost their standing in respectable society because of indiscreet behavior or sexual promiscuity.

3. a demimondaine.

4. prostitutes or courtesans in general.

5. a group whose activities are ethically or legally questionable: a demimonde of investigative journalists writing for the sensationalist tabloids.

Sarah wilted against the brick wall and slumped down in a heap. Flanked by rows of lockers stretching deep into the darkened high school hallways, she hid her face from the football team photos leering down on her in her moment of wretched shame.

The floor tile was cool and inviting against her cheek, but reeked of bleach. She sat up, smoothed out her homecoming dress, tossed away her tiara and buried her face in her hands.

The laughter still followed her out of the dance, drowning out the limp pop music drooling out of the school’s staticky sound system.

Sarah expected a friend or two to chase after her, but no one, not even a teacher, emerged out of the double doors. She woke up that morning as a borderline member of a demimonde comprised of theater geeks, fag hags, goth trash, and full-blood nerds. She decided prom was where she would make her move, scale the social ladder and hope that, a few feet above the riff raff, she wouldn’t feel so suffocated by loneliness.

Yet, months of planning, clever posturing, and sacrifices of some of her closest friendships resulted in a catastrophic collapse after her vote rigging ploy got her elected homecoming queen.

A chuckle finally fought its way out of her lips. She lifted up her eyes defiantly.

“I survived,” Sarah mumbled, the smile spreading across her face. “I am invincible.”

She wiped the mascara from her cheeks, stood up, retrieved her tiara, threw open the double doors and stormed back into the dance.