Big Words

Teleological. I don't know what it means.

There are many other words the meaning of which I don’t know, but this is the one that chaps my hide.  It doesn’t pop up all that often but every time it does, I tell myself I should look it up.

It’s not like looking it up is that big a job. We must have a half-dozen dictionaries in this house, one of which is on the shelf behind me, easily within arm’s reach. I just turned around to make sure that was true and there it was. A perfectly good Webster’s - which isn’t the best but at least it’s not schlock like the New American Collegiate. Of course, I didn’t pick it up. That would spoil my run of not knowing what teleological means.

I’m not afraid of big words. I love words and language. Linguistic uppityness is my life.

I regularly use words like aliphatic and enumerative, cathartic, existential and streptococcus. I didn’t have to look any of them up.  I love to trot out a really obscure polysyllabic construction even when a short, common word would have sufficed. My personal lexicon is copious and my use of it inspired.

I’ve just never bothered to look up teleological. And I probably won’t this time, either. And it will continue to annoy me every time I come across it.

Don’t ask me why.