This Week in Word of the Day – 5/06/2013
hellion \HEL-yuhn\, noun:
a disorderly, troublesome, rowdy, or mischievous person.
She knew her boy was a hellion and bent for a life of crime and violence. Yet, she loved him stridently, her support never wavering despite the sit downs with the principal, the visits by law enforcement, and the crippling parade of fines and restitutions.
He was a sociopath, she could see that now. She understood what they were, for she had known far too many in her life.
She would never abandon the boy, though. She understood, like no other, what he endured. The horrid father she finally escaped by fleeing halfway across the world, the isolation of being a hyena forced to behave amongst the sheep.
She prayed that God would still his heart so he could find peace, but she knew God was unreasonable in such matters. Even so, her love for God was equally beyond condition or reserve.
cull \kuhl\, verb:
1. to choose; select; pick.
2. to gather the choice things or parts from.
3. to collect; gather; pluck.
noun:
1. act of culling.
2. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.
It was an odd thing, to cull from my friend’s possessions following the funeral. Books, CDs, video games, novelty glasses – how much do I take without seeming greedy, how much do I leave without seeming thoughtless and ungrateful? If I had it my way, I would have taken everything, every scrap of clothing, every broken toy, every obscure record, every crazy knick knack my friend picked up during his wild and all too brief trip through this world. I would have taken it all to keep him whole and alive, in a fashion, but that would be selfish. We dispersed his possessions for the same reason we dispersed his ashes, to release him, as a gift, into the wider world so he could rest and we could begin to heal.
polliwog \POL-ee-wog\, noun:
a tadpole.
Following their disastrous turn as lovers, the royal sorceress decided that there was no other recourse than to turn the king into a polliwog and deposit him into the moat.
Sure, it would be difficult to explain why the king suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night with no guards, never to return to his kingdom again, but he wasn’t particularly popular among the court nor his subjects. His absence was quickly forgotten as his more capable cousin was placed in his stead.
As for the displaced king, he found life squiggling through the mucky waters, feasting on algae and incorporating himself into the complex aquatic culture rather fetching. He was never one for paperwork, he napped all day, and, once he grew into a frog, spent most of his time sunbathing and feasting on the rich bounty of flies circling the rancid city walls. It was like living in Italy without the inconvenience of dealing with Italians.
And he would have been perfectly content wasting away his days as an amphibian, but that stupid girl and her stupid kiss ruined everything.
saccharine \SAK-er-in, -uh-reen, -uh-rahyn\, adjective:
1. exaggeratedly sweet or sentimental: a saccharine smile; a saccharine song of undying love.
2. of the nature of or resembling that of sugar: a powdery substance with a saccharine taste.
3. containing or yielding sugar.
4. a very sweet to the taste; sugary: a saccharine dessert.
5. cloyingly agreeable or ingratiating: a saccharine personality.
Bubbha and Muskrat watched the wispy white streaks race toward the empty blackness of Hell. The projectiles glowed red as they approached, then plunged into the invisible wall and disappeared with just the briefest shower of sparks.
“The condemned,” Toad whispered in his high chirp of a voice. The royal poet was a gift from the king of a mining empire from a golden moon of a massive gas giant within the inner rim of the Milky Way Galaxy.
“Few living beings have seen the gates of Hell so close, even fewer have retained their sanity,” Toad hissed as he shielded his eyes, fearfully.
Bubbha glanced at Muskrat with concern. Muskrat replied with a heavy smile and a reassuring nod.
“But you two,” Toad began, preparing to launch into another round of overwrought, saccharine flattery. “You two noble warriors of the – ”
“Let me stop ya there, weirdo,” Bubbha interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I am not one to turn down a compliment, but I am about full up with your fancy words and just want a bit of silence for a change.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Muskrat muttered, then nodded to the souls pounding into the gates of Hell. “And not just this, but everything. I am tired of it, ya feel me, brother?”
“Yeah,” Bubbha muttered. “I feel ya.”
Bubbha glanced back at Toad, who still could not look upon the dreadful emptiness.
“Turn this sonovabitch back toward Little Dixie,” Bubbha snapped. “And get us there before Mama’s Day.”
ratiocination \rash-ee-os-uh-NEY-shuhn, -oh-suh-, rat-ee-\, noun:
the process of logical reasoning.
WALTER ran the house with unparalleled precision. A state-of-the-art domestic manager and robotic concierge, WALTER was a prototype that represented the future of domestic managers. He was wirelessly connected to every appliance, the thermostat, monitors on every window and door as well as pest detectors throughout the attic and inner walls. WALTER was capable of shifting power, shutting down unnecessary processes, and feeding energy back into the power grid to save the owner, Sarah, hundreds of dollars every month. When dealing with humans, WALTER could read over 1000 distinct facial reactions as well as distinguishing the tone and timber of voices speaking 128 different dialects of English, Spanish, Cantonese, Arabic, and French – though sarcasm was often difficult to recognize.
WALTER could even understand and react to six different types of barks from Sarah’s ten year old beagle, Sparks.
Yet, when it came to interacting with Sarah while they were alone, WALTER grew increasingly confused and uncomfortable, for there was no room for ratiocination when dealing with the tortures of love, hope, and jealousy.
droll \drohl\, adjective:
1. amusing in an odd way; whimsically humorous; waggish.
noun:
1. a droll person; jester; wag.
verb:
1. Archaic. to jest; joke.
Those that survived to see the other side of the fence would always remember Rudolpho. He was not the bravest within the prison camp, he was not the most spiritual, inventive of intellectual. He simply possessed a resiliency, a spirit untouched by their shared wretched misery. As the plight of the inmates became increasingly bleak, Rudolpho’s droll persona bloomed brighter.
And when the dysentery took hold of him, he was never funnier. He sang, anguished, his voice booming from the latrines, and the prisoners laughed with all the strength left in them.
Of the 238 souls taken to the prison, only 34 were liberated two years later. Rudolpho was among the 34, but he did not survive the trip home. He had guided his friends through the darkness up until his last flicker, when he felt safe enough to take his final bow.
quibble \KWIB-uhl\, verb:
1. to equivocate.
2. to carp; cavil.
noun:
1. an instance of the use of ambiguous, prevaricating, or irrelevant language or arguments to evade a point at issue.
2. the general use of such arguments.
3. petty or carping criticism; a minor objection.
“No!” Death growled, with grey, sulfuric fumes gushing out his crooked teeth as he stomped his skeletal foot on the ground. “I will not wager your life on a game of Monopoly!”
“Why not, are you chicken?” LeRoy asked with a wink.
“No, no, no I’m not chicken. It has nothing to do with me being chicken. Ever since that stupid movie came out, everyone thinks they can just challenge me to some ridiculous game so they can get a couple more years tacked onto their miserable existence. But no, it doesn’t work that way and, even if I were that easily manipulated, I certainly wouldn’t play Monopoly!”
“What’s wrong with Monopoly?” LeRoy asked, genuinely offended.
“Oh, in theory, nothing,” Death shot back, flames pooling in his eye sockets as he grew more annoyed. “But when you actually sit down, everybody grew up playing different rules, even though the official rules are on the damn box, and you spend two hours quibbling over the ‘right way to play.’ Then someone has their kid or their girlfriend or whoever that is too feeble to understand how to play like a big boy, so it’s this unspoken rule that you take it easy on them, then they end up winning because no one wants to hurt the idiot’s feelings. Everyone else starts forming alliances, but no one wants to team up with Death because I am too creepy! Do you know how that makes me feel? Not good, I’ll tell you that!”
“Geez, whatever, it was just a suggestion,” LeRoy sighed.
“Sorry, that was unfair. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that. It’s just a sore subject, you know?”
“No problem,” LeRoy said as the silence settled in while they waited for the elevator. LeRoy finally looked back over to Death.
“What are your thoughts on 90′s Trivial Pursuit?”
