The KellyGram

Wisdom and Wit About the Wonderful and Often Wacky World of Words

For many years, one of my favorite poets has been Ogden Nash, described on Wikipedia as "an American poet best known for writing pithy and funny light verse." Nash himself described his specialty as "the minor idiocies of humanity." During his career, he published 19 volumes of poetry, and the majority of the entries are "pithy and funny" indeed.

Many of his poems are wonderful nonsense about various members of the animal kingdom. A few samples (in their entirety):

"The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle,
In such a fix to be so fertile."

"The one-L lama, he's a priest,
The two-L llama, he's a beast,
And I would bet a silk pyjama
There isn't any three-L lllama."

"If called by a panther,
Don't anther."

Husbands and wives were also among his favorite subjects. One poem included this couplet:

"So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat over everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable."

Another offered this bit of advice to husbands:

"Affection is a noble quality;
It leads to generosity and jollity.
But it also leads to breach of promise
If you go around lavishing it on red-hot momise."

My library includes several Nash volumes, but I hadn't read any of them for some time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, while browsing online, I happened to spot one of his poems. It includes a word I had only seen in print once before, used by an individual who was perhaps unaware of a warning uttered by Julius Caesar a couple of millennia ago: "Avoid a strange and unfamiliar word as you would a dangerous reef."

That first encounter with the word was in a "how to" magazine article, in which the writer was attempting to get across to his audience the notion to "stick to the basics" in their endeavors. The term he chose, however, was "Go to the fundament." When I checked my dictionary, I discovered that while one definition of fundament was "underlying principle," it was merely the third definition, preceded by 1) buttocks, and 2) anus.

Now, Ogden Nash was quite familiar with those other definitions, as evidenced by the following:

"I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament."

There's a lesson here for all of us. As French novelist Jean-Paul Sartre once warned: "Words are loaded pistols." So it's important to stick to the familiar ones, lest you wind up shooting yourself in the foot - or perhaps in the fundament.

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SMILE AWHILE

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After the funeral of Sarah Jones' husband, a close friend stopped to comfort her. "That was a lovely service," she said.

"Thank you," said Sarah. "My husband always wanted the nicest funeral possible, and set aside $50,000 for that purpose."

"Well," said her friend, "I'm sure you have a lot of that money left over."

"Oh, no," said Sarah. "I spent the entire $50,000. I paid the funeral parlor $4,500 and the minister $500, and the memorial stone cost $45,000."

"$45,000 for a memorial stone," exclaimed her astonished friend. "Just how big is it?"

"Three-and-a-half carats!"

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ODDS AND ENDS

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Answer to Fun with Words:

1. 200 Dollars for Passing Go in Monopoly
2. 76 Trombones Led the Big Parade
3. 29 Days in February in a Leap Year
4. 54 Cards in a Deck (including Jokers)
5. 13 Stripes on the American Flag
6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
7. 18 Wheels on a Tractor Trailer
8. You Load 16 Tons (and What Do You Get)

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THE LAST WORD

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To commemorate Saint Patrick’s Day, we close with this traditional Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again –
May the Good Lord hold you in the hollow of His hand.

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© 2008 by Bob Kelly. All rights reserved.