You learn something new everyday

It took all day, but at 5pm on Friday, I learned a new word.
Saturday, September 17, 2005

You know the old adage, “You learn something new everyday.” Well, as it turns out, most days you really don’t learn anything. But yesterday, I learned a new word: logorrhea. It is such a wonderful word that Dictionary.com has used it twice as their word of the day.

Now that I have enticed you with this introduction, you are probably chomping at the bit to find out what the word actually means (assuming you don’t already know and that you are still reading this post instead of having clicked on the link to the definition). So here’s what it means:

Diarrhea of the mouth.

Ok, fine, that’s not the true definition of the word. That is more like:

Excessive use of words.
Excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.
Pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking.

But isn’t it more fun to say “diarrhea of the mouth?” And that phrase reminds me of my high school math teacher. She used to accuse students (not me, of course) of having diarrhea of the mouth. If only I had know about the word “logorrhea” back then. I could have, in my totally smart-ass tone of voice, informed her that the students did not actually have diarrhea of the mouth, but instead they suffered from logorrhea. She would have loved that.

And to be honest, what better of a word to learn on the day you are setting up a new blog: a blog that has no purpose or focus, a blog that contains posts of dribble such as this one. The world really does work in mysterious ways.