Ironically,

it was the language that got my attention more than the

message on my answering machine last week:

"Hey,

how about a correction on the front page! I'm getting

teased mercilessly about the years you added to my age.

It's not like you to get something wrong, but this is an

egregious error!"

I flipped

to the story I wrote about walkers in training for

marathons, and there it was, a mistake in the number of

years I gave a woman who also happens to be one of my

best friends (or was). Checked the copy on my hard drive.

Yep, there it was. No way can I blame anybody else. So, I

go beyond company policy, which is to make corrections in

at least as conspicuous a location as the original

blunder appeared, and herewith make this one on page 1C

instead of 3B: Viki Brigham is NOT 68.

What really

lit up my circuits was her use of that yummy word

"egregious." It's so seldom used that I looked

it up to be sure I understood it correctly. It's also

perfect in this context on several levels.

First

definition is archaic: "remarkable." Of course.

My error was remarkable - for its rarity, I would

hope. The second definition is "outstanding for

undesirable qualities, remarkably bad, flagrant,"

and my thesaurus goes on to include synonyms like

blatant, glaring, unmitigated. I'm sure that's what Viki

meant, not "remarkable."

(Most

interesting of all is that its Latin root,

"egregius," means "separated from the

herd, hence select." Now my friend, a former

newspaper editor and a precise writer, might not have

used "egregious" if she'd remembered that she

was photographed for that article in the midst of what

can only be described as a herd of walkers.)

Words like

"egregious" may occur in print, but too seldom

in speech. Another that took me aback recently was

Peachtree City municipal guru Betsy Tyler's

conversational use of the word "untoward." I

don't think I'd ever heard it used in speech before. She

was repeating to a city official his declaration that

some foam on Flat Creek was harmless. "You're saying

this will have no untoward effects downstream,"

Betsy said thoughtfully, and I was so impressed I forgot

about the foam.

In March,

visiting my daughter in Germany, I kept in touch with

home by e-mail, and one day received a letter from a

friend who knows how much I love words. "I thought

of you today," she said, "when I had to go to

the dictionary for two words, both in the first paragraph

of an article - `chthonic' and `scrofulous.'"

It seemed

that in whichever of Mary's apartments I was staying, the

one in Cologne or the one in Gelsenkirchen, her English

dictionary was at the other. But eventually I found out

what the unfamiliar words meant, and wrote Marquita back

and advised her to find something else to read. The

subject matter sounded very depressing. That, and the

fact that I did a lot of reading during that trip, got me

started keeping a list of challenging words I came

across, words that sent me to a dictionary that was

sometimes 35 miles away.

Now, I like

to think of myself as more than adequately literate, but

sometimes a word out of context stumps me. Here are a few

more, plus one non-word to watch out for. Don't worry;

I'll give you definitions. I thought I knew what

"scurrilous" means, but checked on it, and

then, believe it or not, I came across this one in a

novel and simply boggled: "solipsistic."

When I

corrected my daughter Jean on her pronunciation of

"hectare," I suddenly got that wavery,

uncertain feeling that invariably means I'd best consult

a dictionary, and was glad I did. I'd have sworn it had

three syllables.

Which of

the following expressions have nautical origins? 1. Down

the hatch. 2. Leeway. 3. Go by the board. 4. In the

offing. 5. Bitter end. 6. Taken aback. 7. Stranded. 8.

Three sheets to the wind. I've said it before: Words are

my toys as well as my tools. Would that I were as precise

with ages.

Definitions:

untoward - not favorable, adverse, unseemly;

chthonic - (pronounced something like

"thon-ik") dark, primitive, mysterious;

scrofulous - like or having scrofula, a

nasty-sounding disease characterized by enlarged glands

in the neck, suppuration, and scar formation; scurrilous

- using indecent or abusive language, vulgar,

foulmouthed; solipsistic - from solipsism, the

theory that nothing exists but the self; hectare -

(pronounced like "hek-ter") a metric unit of

land or 100 ares (which is pronounced "ar" and

is equal to 100 square meters).

All the

numbered expressions have nautical origins, according to

Robert S. Lee in "English from the Sea,"

published in SPELL/Binder, March-April 2000: 1. Safely

stowed away. 2. To have leeway meant having room to

maneuver between vessel and lee shore to avoid being

driven into it. 3. Abandoned, as a mast that fell

overboard when shot away or carried off in a gale. 4.

When a vessel coming into harbor is visible some distance

offshore. 5. The end of a rope nearest the bitts (strong

attachment posts) on the ship. 6. A vessel was taken

aback when a sudden shift of wind struck the back side of

the sails, often with unpleasant consequences. 7. The

land between low and high tide was the strand; a ship

that wound up there was stranded. 8. Sheets are the ropes

that control the sails; if they are flapping free, the

vessel is wallowing like a staggering drunk. The non-word

"wavery" is not in my dictionaries.

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