i love language, this strange collection of sounds and scribbles that join forces to allow for humanity to express itself to . . . well ultimately to itself (and imperfectly at that) . . . at any rate, this language thing never ceases to amaze me.

language is one of those things that you can give far too much thought to, and walk away more befuddled than you were when you started your exploration. language is fundamental to our human experience and, apart from humanity itself, about the most fascinating thing our world has to offer.

sadly, i see the english language shrinking; the rich tapestry of our vernacular is wearing thin, threads are constantly being neglected as american culture continues the process of dumbing itself down. with that in mind, i present a charming little word that i came across the other day while flipping through a dictionary at work . . .

dornick

it’s just fun to say, try it once or twice with me,

dornick, dornick

now what does it mean? well that’s the fun part, because this is close to the most useless word that i’ve come across in quite some time; according to dictionary.com . . .

A stone small enough to throw from a field being cleared.

but this is the delight of language, because when i read this definition the following scenario popped into my mind:

picture the finite jester walking down the street with one of his odd acquaintances, suddenly the jester leans down, picks up an object, and says to his companion,

“look, a dornick!”

“a what?”

“a dornick; a stone small enough to be thrown from a field being cleared,” the jester says and passes the dornick over.

his companion, somewhat taken aback by this odd and utterly trivial piece of information, has nevertheless filed this memetic tidbit away in some region of their brain and, when the moment is right, will pass the word on to someone else.

do we need the word ‘dornick’ floating around in the contemporary vernacular?

no, probably not, but then again to we really need the word ‘toast’? couldn’t we get along by making reference to ‘browned bread’?

sure, but it’s not nearly as fun.

and now that you’ve read this, you realize that it is your responsibility (ok, perhaps responsibility is too strong a term) to pass this sucker along . . . and what’s really funny to me is that i’m willing to bet that since you have actually read this far (foolish you), you’re not going to be able to look at aerodynamic stones without a little part of your mind firing off and supplying you with the appropriate term . . .

dornick

dornick

dornick

Enjoy

- finite

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 11:54 pm and is filed under indiscriminate, words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.