I am blessed to come from a family that is very verbal, that delights in oral and written exchanges and expression and in word play. It seems as if they always put things just right, and often they amuse or provide a pleasant surprise with verbal ingenuity.
When I was in college, my brother and his wife gave me a book as a Christmas gift: Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Oxford History of the American People. On the flyleaf, my brother wrote an inscription: “To the effervescent pedant / With love”
I thought of this because of an email exchange I had with my brother this morning.
In the email to my brother, I quoted from my post
“her” instead of “him”; Ms.; and what else?
as follows: “The PC types are all for conversation (of the wilderness and the natural environment). Why do they want to tear asunder our language? Like nature, it should be conserved, which does mean embalmed or ossified.”
and, in the email, said:
See any problem with this?
The PC crowd does tend to be loquacious.
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My brother responded as follows:
Cute typo.
Reminds me when you confused “martial relations” with “marital relations,” an apt malaprop that sent Mom into gales of laughter — loving laughter because in part she was enjoying your early advanced vocabulary.
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I wrote back:
All very true, Pete.
Aptly described.
Your memory is impressive.
I had forgotten how I used to get “martial” and “marital” mixed up.
Sometimes, I would make words up, which amused Mom … I used to say, “It’s just the INTRACITIES of life.”
Once I wrote Mom a letter using several big words I had just learned. I said that if she had no objection, I would DESCANT upon a few things. (To descant means to talk tediously or at length.)
She wrote back a letter beginning with, “So, cant me no descants.” She loved word play.
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This was brilliant usage by my mother. The intransitive verb cant (the meaning of which I did not know) is defined thusly:
1: to talk or beg in a whining or singsong manner
2: to speak in cant or jargon
3: to talk hypocritically
I’m trying to remember in which work of literature I first encountered the word descant. I usually don’t forget such things.
It will come to me.
— Roger W. Smith
December 22, 2017
