Fun with Words

My TODO list is an interesting place. Candidates for this series are interspersed with the rest of my TODOs. I am eager to document new words and my TODO list is often the lowest friction way to do so; the file is always open, ready for me to add notes. That's why "shoes for wedding" is two spaces before "verso" in my TODOs. I digress.

Hereare the words I have documented over the last week or so to feature in the latest edition of Fun with Words:

• Antedate: Happened before a date in time.
• Gaffe: An accidental remark that causes embarrassment.
• Jaunty: In a state of happiness, and/or full of confidence.
• Verso: According to Merriam-Webster: "the side of a lead (as part of a manuscript that is to be read second), or "a left hand page". (My research showed a few different definitions, so I decided to reference Merriam-Webster here.) ^1
• Distill: Reduce a work to the most important part(s), or to reduce a liquid to an essence.

I was about to start this paragraph with the phrase "Before starting this paragraph", and then tella. story of my looking down to my coffee cup to see there bening no liquid left. I accidentally typed "paragram" instead. Curiosity struck and I wondered "is paragram a word?" It turns out that "paragram" is indeed a word, referring to "a pun made by changing the letters of a word, especially the initial letter" ^1

Now for the irregular section in this series where I try to use as many of the words featured above as possible in a sentence:

The antedate gaffe was made by the jaunty politican after hastily reading the verso of a policy paper and distilling the contents without double-checking the information.

Five out of six words used. Pretty good! I couldn't fit "paragram" in there. If you'd like to have a go at using as many featured words in this post, please do! Post what you write on your blog or email me with the results.