Colorful Language

Inuit people have more words for snow than any other folks on the planet.

Not that it should be a competition, but English needs to up its number of words describing the plethora of pigments called green.

We’ve been stingy. 

Sure, there’s lime, Kelly, forest, dark, light, and olive green, but what about that particular shade when the morning sun peeps above the ridge casting first light onto soft round hills covered in brand-new-fresh-sprouted-overnight earth-fuzz - springing up after rain? VIVID green doesn’t do it justice. You have to BE there to appreciate it. It’s indescribable take-your-breath-away-give-you-leaky-eyes for the sheer beauty and poignancy of it GREEN. 

We’ve had some stellar gray to black skies and so much rain recently where I live, the return of the sun lighting the newly grown greens is especially lovable. I cried as I witnessed that newness this morning. Now, pair the blue-black thunderhead clouds with a late afternoon golden sun shower making the trembling poplar leaves go Vvvvwubba Vvvvwubba with aliveness. I can hear them. I’m sure that’s how to pronounce the joyful noise they make!

English is limited. We must take our heritage of limitation into our own hands to sculpt communication’s destiny.

When you come across a new green, or any other color for that matter, NAME it. Claim it and spread the word! Use it around town, with bank tellers, grocery clerks, doctors, and neighbors.  Sooner or later, our dictionary will become fat as a contented cat who's had her fill of sproingy-silver-gray-green Catnip.

Choosing words from the existing lexicon is somewhat satisfying. It becomes a puzzle to see how close we can get to describing what we want to convey about a sensory experience. Creating a word is far more satisfying, but it must be shared with others to verify they get the same bhav, mood, tingle or cringe in the pit of their stomach from the word you think best describes what you've named. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

Kaffoogeldie is a word I’ve been trying out to describe the up-be-fuckedness of any particularly discombobulating event. Friends seem to approve the usage. Some in my surround even use it themselves.

Working words spread. Take gnarly. Surfers may or may not have been the originators. (Turns out it dates from the 1500s.) While surfers seem first to have used it to describe a great or tortuous wave, it has also come to mean groovy, good, or tubular (which has also been adopted as a wave description). Delightful in some way to the beholder or experiencer, gnarly has surpassed a simple wave and now describes any WOW event, object, weed, or article of clothing, or even a way of speaking, singing, existing. Maybe in the same way black speech has adapted "that's baad" to mean something really good.

How do we go forward with our limited options for expression? What words are you bursting to thrust into spoken word or written language? Inquiring minds want to know. Your voice matters. Your specific tonal range, cadence, volume, and rhythm matter in the soundscape. 

With my head on my honey's chest, his speaking is a rumble and particularly endearing to my ear flat against his skin shutting out all other sounds but his. Unique. Honeyrummmble.

Creative.

Only way to go.

Groshslosh green is the green of saturated un-mown grass in-between downpours, when your wrong-for-the-rain-shoes sink in slushing mud all the way up your instep. Friends and I recently hiked a flat trail all the way around Garbage Mountain up in Richmond. Probably, it has another name. I just don't know it may be. Two of us had inappropriate shoes and got gross-sloshed by what we suspected might be hazardous run-off from the mountain. Sure was beautiful though... geese, ducks, rain, green grass, and a choppy wind-blown Bay.

Maybe there's another descriptor for the green hummingbird neck that glistens in the last light of sun before setting as she sips her bed-time bit of nectar from the feeder outside the kitchen window. What sound describes her darting, feeding, glistening emerald neck? Brrrrrrrrrrtttt green, maybe, almost in a Scotts brogue? 

How about the green of a tomato hornworm? Gleeucch eww green. Those creatures are so ugly they make me gag to conjure, but up close and personal they're so ugly they're cute in their own revolting way. Yes, Gleeucch eww green will do.

Now then, what words can possibly describe the scent of first grind coffee as it lifts to the nostrils? A plethora of possibilities! Sweet anticipation? Eh, too mundane. Especially for a  Monday. That first burst (pssssst) of a can opener puncturing the lid (although I don't buy coffee in a can anymore) releasing bitter, sweet chocolatey scent of its content is toe-tingling. Is it love or addiction? Whatever.... I do love it.

My beloved has come up with a few words we both now use. Two are self-evident: Unvitation and Prepology. ("She issued a prepology under her breath as she said, 'No. You’re not welcome at the picnic Sunday.'")

Try a third one of his on for size: Dentingle. Do you get the same feeling of dread we do when you've got your alligator clipped bib on and the dentist starts up the whirring drill?

Sometimes, in sunlight my honey’s eyes are brown the color of Reed's Root Beer candies... even my tongue gets into that one, reflexively seeking the indentation in the smooth amber brown roundness. Saaaaweeeeeeeet!