My Plethora of Thoughts Mused in a Bucolic Setting

Just as I’m getting in the habit of writing again, I’m afraid some outside alien might be infiltrating my brain.  Last month I started a post about my three favorite words and as soon as I hit ‘Save Draft’, almost every blog I read was about favorite or interesting words. What’s causing this synchronicity?   I’m relatively new to the blogging world, so I don’t know if this is a common occurrence.  I’d like to think it’s some cosmic merging of all the greatest of minds leading us to all blog simultaneously on the same subject. Okay, maybe  it’s a merging of the greatest creative minds.  I’d even settle for a mind merging of decent typist suffering from lexophilia.

Image via Wikipedia

Because of my tendency to procrastinate, two of my favorite words have already been raved over by others.  I’ll just take a moment to add my thoughts. The first word I love is ‘bucolic’. What writer doesn’t love this word?  It instantly places you in a rural scene without the writer having to go into a lot of description.  As you visualize the setting, you can almost smell the nature.  It’s a much nicer sensory trip than the sensory trip experienced when writing the similar word ,’bulimic’.

The second word is ‘plethora’.  Although this lovely word, which means a large quantity,  is often found on standardized test, I somehow missed it in the SAT study guides of high school.  I’m sure I’ve read it many times in books and  intended to look it up,  but never did.  I was in my thirties before I actually heard it used in conversation and I fell in love with it.  Of course when I finally had my first chance to use it months later, I pronounced it incorrectly and continued this mistake until someone had the nerve to correct me.  Luckily I hadn’t used it often enough to cause a great deal of lost sleep over my blunder.   For years, it remained my #1 favorite.

C. S. Lewis Image via Wikipedia

I have to thank Mr. C.S. Lewis for my new favorite word.  The word is ‘quisling’.  Now by itself it’s an intriguing word but Lewis actually referred to ‘filthy quislings’.  Well that’s just doubly intriguing.  I’m sure to some this is not a new word but I can’t remember ever seeing it before reading Mere Christianity.  A quisling, especially a filthy quisling, is basically a traitor.  I don’t remember my History books using this term when we discussed Benedict Arnold.  Of course, there’s not a lot I remember from History classes, so it may have been used frequently.

Now my problem is trying to fit this word into conversation.  It’s hard to throw it around if you’re not in the military or politics.  My friends and I rarely talk of traitors.  Maybe around Easter I can start a heated discussion on  Judas and throw in my new favorite word.  And, don’t worry,  I double checked the pronunciation in the dictionary.