So Much More than My Favorite Word

I love words. I keep a little post-it of my favorite ones taped to my computer screen at the big bad-investment-bank I call work. Scrawled across it, in cramped handwriting, lie intractable but beautiful words, like “eponymous” and “Panglossian,” interspersed among satisfyingly onomatopoeic words — like “munch.”

I write for this investment bank. I write about economics, politics and what it means that the ringgit (the currency of Malaysia) has rallied 10% in a week. Things that matter to our portfolio fund wielding clients. Occasionally, deep in the minutia of the GDP data, topics can err on the dull side. So, I spice things up a bit – a little fruity language here, a pop-culture reference there – just to keep the reader on their toes. Push the boundaries a bit.

Banks are, almost by definition, not the setting for this. A culture clash occurs every time I turn up to work in thrifted yellow cigarette trousers or title a report, “If you like it then you should put a ringgit on it.” I watch my editor’s eyes grow wide as my trousers, then cringe as he swipes his scythe through my carefully crafted prose. For weeks I would scowl on the phone to my friend,”This is censorship!”

But is it?

Censorship implies an issue with what I want to say, rather than the way I want to say it. He merely objects to my style.

One lazy Tuesday afternoon, as I flitted between perusing the fashion-blogosphere and the econo-blogosphere, I stumbled across a new one. A new word. It was nestled in an innocuous article about multitasking by the economist and journalist Tim Harford: “Bowdlerised.”

When reading a piece by a familiar author, finding a new word is like coming across a new café or bar just around the corner from your house. You thought you knew the lay of land, but there it is – shiny, full of promise, goading you to type it into Google.

What do you mean, word?

What obscure meaning do you encompass that I have yet to come across?

(A nano-second pause for Google’s servers to spit out their result.)

And then there it was.

Bowdlerize: to “remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective.”

Sometimes words are the window-dressing of life. They scrub it up, make it sound important or look beautiful. But sometimes, if you’re lucky, you are delivered a lightning bolt to the frontal cortex, articulating what you have failed to — despite your existing artillery of words — in one single, perfect package. A word that transcends expressive tool; it’s part of who you are.

A word to make you realize…you don’t want to be that word anymore.

I fire up Google once more and type: “How to start a blog.”

Ah, Universe. You work in strange and mysterious ways.

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