Lots of interesting words on page 33 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. Today, we have a cool little verb: bruit.

Picking Bruit

I’ve taken a different approach today in picking a word. I found an example sentence first. This is often the most time consuming part of the whole exercise. For example, I really wanted to use the word “brulé” today. It means “a forest region destroyed by fire.” But there are so many people with that last name that finding the word in a sentence was difficult. Actually, “bruit” turned out to be too; but I found something that worked out well just as I was about to give up.

I thought it was interesting that “bulimia” was in the dictionary. This edition of the book was published in 1985. That’s just two years after Karen Carpenter died. But to stop thinking about that, you can listen to “Superstar” by The Carpenters. It’s not the best version. But it does have a naiveté that works for it and makes it special.

A word that brought back a lot of memories was “buccal,” which describes something related the cheek. One doesn’t normally need such a word, but in a dentist office, it is critically important.

But on to bruit:

Page 32 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition didn’t have much to work with. But at least we had “brannigan.”

Beyond Brannigan

There were a couple of words today that reminded me of Donald Trump. One is today’s word itself. But there are other things like bravado and bray. I especially think of “bray” when I watch Trump. Bravado is obvious.

There were a couple of words that I didn’t know. The first was “bretelle.” That is “an ornamental shoulder strap.” No surprise that I wouldn’t know a word that had to do with fashion.

The second word was “brisance.” That is more jargon than word: “the shattering power of high explosive.” Now that I think of it — another Trump word!

But on to the chosen word:

I can’t complain about Page 31 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. How can you fault a page that gives you a word as great as “boustrophedon.”

This Article Will Not Use Boustrophedon

Truthfully, I really wanted to do a word I know really, really well: bourgeois. But maybe not, because these Odd Words articles are really more about talking about the words that I don’t use. So let me talk about “bourgeois.”

I remember knowing this word when I was very young — five years or less? It was a fun word because it sounded so weird. My sister and I would repeat, “That’s so bourgeois!” We must have heard that phrase somewhere. To us it meant more or less tasteless. I was shocked in my teens to learn the word in its proper context as a class construct.

Of course, I have to admit, that I still do have something of an attitude about middle class tastes. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have an attitude about proletariat tastes too. Much of my artistic thinking is involved with the creation of art that is both fun but challenging. The essence of bourgeois taste is that it is comfortable; it tells people that the way things are is just fine. I don’t think that.

I’m So Bourgeois!

The problem is: that is such a bourgeois way of thinking. Sure, it isn’t the standard bourgeois thinking. But it is clearly the thinking of a member of that class. And I know that if I ever find an audience for my work, it will be the bourgeoisie. Someone quite like me will say, “That’s so bourgeois!” It’s a good thing I love contradiction!

Okay, on to a truly wondrous word: boustrophedon:

I thought I might not find anything I didn’t know on Page 30 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. But there was a medical word that is actually useful: borborygmus.

Beyond Borborygmus

Again with the repetition: botulin, botulinus, and botulism. To make matters worse, the definition of the first is “the toxin produced by botulinus, the cause of botulism.” So the first word defined the two that followed it. I want to pull my hair out.

There was also “boondoggle” and “boondocks.” These are wonderfully fun sounding words. Plus, it’s an excuse to listen to Billy Joe Royal doing Joe South’s “Down in the Boondocks.” South is best known for his song “Games People Play.” He also wrote “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden.” Yes, he was one of the greats.

Okay, enough about Joe South. Here’s borborygmus:

As you can see, I’m not doing these posts every day. They’re hard. But today we do Page 29 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. It had a great word for today and to the general election and then maybe another four or eight years: blatherskite.

Me No Blatherskite

In a regular dictionary, you know you are going to get a lot of repetition. But for one like ours, repetition is annoying. This pages starts with: blaspheme, blasphemous, and blasphemy. Now really: anyone who knows one of those words knows them all, right? And it had words like “bleak.” If you don’t know that word, you need a regular dictionary.

But there were a lot of things I didn’t know. Blaue Reiter is “a group of artists employing free form and unconventional colors, active in Munich in the early 20th century.” They did beautiful work. I’ll have to do some more research on them.

But I’m in a bit of a rush, so on to blatherskite:

The word seems to have first appeared in the Francis Sempil song “Maggie Lauder.” It has the line, “Jog on your gait, ye blatherskate.” Enjoy!

And so we get another one! Page 28 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition was no fun! Lots of bi- and bio- words. Do you know them? If you don’t, you can figure them out. So today’s word is “bissextile.”

In This Bissextile Year, Let Me Rant About “Bipartisan”

I have to say something about a very common word on Page 28: bipartisan. In a two party system such as ours, it really should be seen as a pejorative. If you look back at the great bipartisan deals we’ve had, they’ve been terrible. They’ve been the result of the Democratic Party becoming conservative. So we got welfare “reform,” which had the result of making the poor poorer. We got trade deals that did the same thing. We got costly and bloody wars.

In general, bipartisanship is not something that comes from the voters; it’s something that comes from the party elites. I’m no fan of the Tea Party idiots, but I’m with them on the idea that such compromises are really just a form of selling out. What’s funny is that it has been the liberal leadership that has sold out its base. And maybe that’s why. The conservative leaders know that their base is so crazy that it complains about compromise when they do no compromising.

Compromise Is Good

Liberals like the idea of compromise. So do I! But that’s not what bipartisanship has been during my lifetime. In 2011, Obama was willing to trade small tax increases on the wealthy for decreases in Social Security. Tax increases on the rich is a liberal policy — but only when the economy is doing well. It wasn’t. Raising taxes on the rich was part of an austerity program. You know: a conservative program. So he was trading a conservative policy for a conservative policy. Bipartisanship! Let’s have a parade!

And what would the long-term results be? Well, the Social Security cuts would stick. But the rich would find a way around their tax increase. If you haven’t noticed, pretty much whenever a Republican gets into the White House, their taxes get cut. So it would have been a temporary inconvenience. Meanwhile, poor old people would suffer — in perpetuity.

But enough of that. On to bissextile:

Oh, how I’ve missed you all! My writing for Frankly Curious is really the basis of my social life. Make of that what you will. If it sounds really pathetic, I think you get the idea. And these odd words posts are often very personal. Today, we do Page 27 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. Today’s word is “billet-doux.”

Too Tired to Go Beyond Billet-doux

Part 27 was no all that great. It had a bunch of bi- words and then a bunch of bio- words. Not a lot of fun. But in addition to that, I’m still really tired. And whatever I had affected my eyes and is still doing so. So reading is difficult. But I will tell you one story.

When I was young, I was with some friends at the beach at night. And as I walked along the wet sand, it seemed like sparklers were emitting from the front of my shoes. Now me being me, I just thought I was hallucinating. So I asked a friend and sure enough, it was a real thing. We picked up sand and poured it on the ground and saw the same thing. So we took a bucket of it home. The next night, there were no sparklers in the bucket of sand. I think that’s when I first realized that the light came from little animals — which were all dead now. And that what I had seen was bioluminescence.

But enough of that. On to billet-doux:

We are back on track with Page 26 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. Before I start complaining, let me just tell you that today’s word is “Biedermeier.” Yes: capitalized.

Not Great Beyond Biedermeier

As I’ve noted in the past, words tend to clump because of roots. This was a big day for biblio- words. There were 14 of the little suckers. That’s almost an entire column. And then there were the bi- words. There were eight of them — with more to come. The page still had a lot of good words, however. It had bibelot, a small decorative objective. It also had biggin, which is some kind of coffee pot contraption. And it had bijouterie, a collection of jewelry.

It also had some interesting words that I already knew. For example, it had “Donald Trump.” I’m sorry, I mean “bigot.” Additionally, it had “bigamy.” I don’t especially care, except for a great Captain Spaulding bit in Animal Crackers. When told that his suggestion that two women marry him is bigamy, he responds, “Yes and it’s big o’ me too! It’s big of all of us. Why not be big for a change!” And that’s just an excuse for embedding this little bit of video:

But enough of that. On to Biedermeier:

Page 24 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition just sucked. Really! First we got more be- words. Then we got a bunch of ben- words. I decided to go with “bedizen,” because there was only one other word that I could even remotely say I didn’t know.

One Word Beyond Bedizen

The other word was beldam, which our dictionary defines as “an old woman; a hag.” That’s interesting in that I would have figured that it meant “beautiful woman.” That is, after all, what it literally means. And apparently, it was first used to mean more or less “grandmother.” But now it’s just an old woman or even a hag. Anyway, I think the word is archaic. Thus: don’t use it — not even for an odd words post.

Bedizen is a more interesting word:

We’ve made it to page 25 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. And you know what? I knew all the words except for one: berdache. But I have a feeling other people know this word. It’s so modern and edgy.

Beyond Berdache

The page was filled with be- words: bereft, beseech, besmitch, bespoke, betide, betrade. Geez! Very disappointing. But I’m quite glad to learn berdache. With so much discussion of people who see their gender as different from their sex, it’s good to remember that things have always been that way. Social conservatives want to pretend that it is all some kind of liberal conspiracy and that everyone would be exactly the same if they weren’t given “ideas.”

So onward with the word of the day: berdache.

Afterword

From my brief reading, the word “berdache” is meant to indicate not a discrete individual or form of behavior but rather the continuum of people and their behavior. In recent years, the term “two-spirit” has become popular. But it is important in such matters to remember that there is no such think as an American Indian or Native American. There are 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States. And I don’t know how many there were when the Europeans began their invasion. But the diversity of cultures in North America was enormous. So when discussing “berdache,” we want to be careful about making too many assumptions. It is a word used to describe a lot of different behavior from an outsider’s perspective.

Note

I screwed up and did Page 25 when I should have done Page 24. I’ll do Page 24 tomorrow.

There were problems with page 23 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. There were some cool words (which I’ll discuss), but I didn’t have enough resources to do a full definition. So we are stuck with: bastinado.

Beating Past Bastinado

The first word I wanted to use was “battologize.” It is “to repeat words or phrases excessively in speech or writing.” I suffer from this. It’s not just that; I also suffer from this. In fact, it gets so bad, that I sometimes suffer from this. But really: it’s easy to fall into that kind of thing. That’s why it’s important to at least read a piece of writing before publishing.

The second word I selected was “bavardage.” It means “foolish or nonsensical talk.” You would have thought that I would have known that word. It’s like the first word I remember learning: facetious. By the time I was four, the most common sentence my mother said to me was, “Don’t be facetious.” One day I asked her what it meant. Here’s the thing: I could tell it wasn’t good. But whenever she said it, I was feeling pretty damned good myself. Not much has changed over the last five decades.

I suppose I could complain about all the bathy- words on this page. But you know how I feel about that. So let’s move on to today’s word: bastinado.

There were really only two things on page 22 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition: barbiturate and barometer. Really: it was amazing. I understand barometer. It was all pressure related words. But it was remarkable how many words had to do with barbiturates. Just the same, that was a time when there was still memory of people dying a lot for them. Hail the benzodiazepines! But there were other words, so today’s is barcarole.

Barcarole and Beyond

There were some other interesting words beside barcarole, of course. For example: barghest. This is some kind of ghostly apparition that is supposed to be an omen of death. I have a curious relationship with death. I really don’t fear it. At the same time, I wonder how I would feel if I were staring it right in the face. I know that any freak-out that I experienced would just be genetic encoding. But it wouldn’t make it any less unpleasant. The point is that I wonder how I would react if a barghest appeared to me tonight. Probably okay. I’m most okay with death when I’m half asleep.

Anyway, enough of that. On to “barcarole.”