Fun with Words

In the last week, I have had two conversations where someone has used a word that immediately made me think “this would be a good candidate for the Fun with Words series!” Indeed, I was so engrossed by the word that I proclaimed to the others in said conversations that I plan to note them in this series. I love hearing words that make me stop and wonder what they mean or with an itch to read their full defintion.

Today I have words inspired by discussions with friends as well as those I have read, assembled into a veritable cacophonous list that is Fun with Words. (My second attempt at a convoluted sentence a la Stephen Colbert’s Meanwhile series!)

• Evermore: Always. Often used for “rhetorical effect or in ecclesiastical contexts” according to the Oxford Dictionary. (The first results for “evermore” in Google were in reference to the Taylor Swift song Evermore, so my query became “evermore definition” to help Google disambiguate.)
• Etiolated: Pale or weak. Used commonly with reference to plants. (Thanks Angelo for sharing this word with me!)
• Mortarboard: A black hat with a square top worn at graduation ceremonies. Also referred to as an academic cap.
• Lode: A deposit of ore.
• Pedantry: Focused excessively on minor details
• Folderal: A fuss or foolishness.

Now for the semi-regular segment in which I try to use as many of the words featured in this article as possible. Here is my attempt:

After the folderol – in which her pedantry became amusing, leaving a concern whether it would evermore become part of her demeanor – she threw her mortarboard onto the lode and gazed into the etiolated plants, pondering whether everyone was amused as much as she was inside.

I’m pretty happy with that sentence, although it would benefit from more context. Why did the girl have a mortarboard? Why was she near a deposit of ore? Maybe she was graduating outside and there was some ore on the ground? The more I read into the sentence, the more conviction I built around the necessity of the aforementioned additional context.