Brendan Gill shares about his love for words in a short story from our assigned reading. His interest for words started with be exposed to "ladyfingers" and "chicken à la king", which is eerily similar to some of my first memorable exposure to words.
I was mortified when my mom was going to serve ladyfingers while hosting a party. I was even more scared when I assumed we had to kill the king of all chickens to eat this one meal. But the first time I remember thinking how cool words could be, conveniently has everything to do with my blog's title.
In second grade, I had just met Nick Reath, one of my best friends still to this day. We were competitive to say the least, and I'll never forget when we started throwing out the biggest words we knew. "Onomatopoeia" I said, and he replied with "Antidisestablishmentarianism". Dang, he won this round. I asked him what it meant, and he was clueless, so we went to the library in Oakwood Elementary School to check it out.
"Opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established church, especially the Anglican Church in 19th-century England."
Huh? Even now I don't fully understand it. Is that a double negative in a twelve syllable word? Why is there even a word for this? And how on earth was Eminem able to pull it off in the rap "Almost Famous"?
This word will forever haunt me.
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