"English is your mother tongue, and stuff."

Human vocabulary is fascinating. We have dictionaries with thousands and thousands of words--with pronunciations, forms, and a lot of the time the words have multiple definitions.

If you pick a random word of which you are fairly certain you know the correct meaning and look it up in the dictionary, there is a decent chance that it will be a little different than you thought. You might have the basics down on that word, but sometimes there is more than one way to use that particular word that catches you completely unaware.

For example, since I was feeling a bit melancholy today, I looked it up. One of the noun definitions for melancholy is 'black bile'.

Whatever the heck that is. I couldn't even really figure out how you would use the word melancholy to talk about black bile.

So you see, you don't always use some words in all the ways they could be used.

With my attention now caught for a moment, I saw that one of the synonyms for melancholy was 'funk'. So just for fun I entered f-u-n-k into the search and pulled up this definition:

Funk [fuhngk]

–noun
1.cowering fear; state of great fright or terror.
2.a dejected mood: He's been in a funk ever since she walked out on him.

–verb (used with object)
3.to be afraid of.
4.to frighten.
5.to shrink from; try to shirk.–verb (used without object)
6.to shrink or quail in fear.

I am probably showing my ignorance of the English language here, but honestly I always thought that only #2 was the definition of funk. When I think of being afraid or fear, the word funk never comes to my mind.

Of course, part of that could be due to the addition of the letter 'Y' to funk for a completely different word. Because, c'mon. How can you be afraid if you are funky? :)

I admit that I am not a wordsmith. Keeping it simple works for me. I don't have to think too hard, and anyone I am talking with doesn't have to pretend to understand what I am talking about.

I will admit that in the past I have pulled the 'dumb blond' maneuver to get out of a relationship with an overachieving wordsmith type. I was a senior in high school and dating a guy who was fond of coming over and reading the paper. He found me a bit naive and childish when instead of watching him read the paper (there was no paint around for me to watch dry...), I chose to go outside in the snow and play catch with a stray dog that happened by. Silly me.

Once I realized that his intelligence was his point of pride, it was really quite simple for me to figure out how to make him think it was HIS idea to break up with me.

I played dumb. And I played it well.

This is the guy who I might have mentioned before, as the one who poured out his life's drama to me and then got angry with me when I didn't have any similar stories of pain and anguish to share.

He popped off with a "Doesn't ANYTHING bother you???"

And my smart aleck (read "dumb", but I meant every word..which I guess is kind of sad...) response was "Yes. I hate it when you eat a peanut M&M and there is no peanut in it."

And the last nail in the coffin could be heard echoing throughout the room.

I saw him a couple of years later and he rattled off a complete sentence with more large words than a Thesaurus, then smiled a cocky smile and waited for my response to that one.

I honestly had no idea what he had said. Not one. I'm not sure it was even English. So I did the only thing I could do in that situation.

I looked at him blankly, shrugged, said "Nice talking with you" , and walked away.

To this day, the man still believes I am dumb as a post. Maybe so. But his life is still miserable and I still only really get bummed about peanut M&M's without a peanut. I can handle the dumb as a post title if my other option is so depressing.

This has been my pensive ramble for today. I hope someone learned a little something here--mainly for my resolution for 2009--and I hope that you think about looking up some words and learning something on your own too.

And if anyone can explain that 'black bile' thing to me that would be great.

Melancholy? Black bile? I just don't get it....