There is, it seems, for each of us, a fixed number of words. During the course of one’s life, there is a maximum. I tell you this not as a fact, but as a warning. It is not, strictly speaking, a limit on the number of words one can speak-to filibuster is not a daring foray toward a precipice. One can utter as many words as the limitations of time, fatigue, and labral suppleness will permit.
No, the problem lies with which words one can utter. For most, this is a non-issue. They spend their lives sauntering blithely toward a distant cliff, wall, whatever, and reach the actuarial limit without ever becoming aware of their particular peril. Even a dog has room for a few hundred.
If one observes closely, one can see those who have maxed out. Not all of them of course, but many. The school chum who began with such potential, but at age seventeen simply ceased to become more interesting. The teller of Dad Jokes. A president comes to mind.
It is not. however, apparent in all. The number is different for each of us. If one is lucky, judicious, and surrounded with a good selection during one’s acquisitive period, one is left with an ensemble fit to conceal the fact of having reached the limit. An example – the late Richard Feynman explained the secret to his apparent mastery of Portuguese. He impressed with polysyllabic zingers like “consequentamente”, thus concealing that he could no longer acquire even the simplest of new words, such as the Portuguese for “so.”
One can recognize those thus afflicted – if they know another language, and feel the longing for days past, the Proustian urge to flex with a new verbal acquisition, what choice do they have? They can’t actually acquire something new, can’t drop a 23-Skidoo from the latest slang, because it’s out of reach. So they head for the verbal attic, and drag something exotic (but not new) into the parlor. Per se, it’s not a bad thing, chacun a son goût. It livens up the soiree, so que sera! No harm done, since they haven’t themselves worn any crumbs from their’ personal baguette of words.
Oops. Sorry. You see how easy it is to fall into this trap? And why do I apologize? Is it for indulging in my blasé polyglot whimsies, boring you with the monde of mots? No. It’s just that I may have inflicted a new one on you, sans souci. Damn. I will try to stop.
Because Sans Souci, while pretty, is more than likely useless to you, and yet I may have dropped your remaining capacity by two. Two words wasted may not seem like profligacy, and to one raised by taciturn parents and inarticulate professors, it may be safe. For all I know, you may have room for thousands of words, entire thesauri, languages, dialects. You can read the works of Edward Gorey – the horror of it, to think of a man just making up words for the fun of it, and doing so as if it weren’t criminal. Imaging giggling at Gorey neologisms like Ipsifendus and Quoggenzocker without any inkling that someday the price would be the inability to tell an expensive plumber exactly what kind of water thingy problem there is. Or to eat a delicious fruit in a foreign market, knowing that without learning its name, one can never have it again!
When one calcifies, one does not cease to speak, nor to hear. One simply ceases to utter or retain new words. One finds oneself abruptly inside a new box. There is no Aphasia, one keeps what one has, but that’s it. Some have managed to make a life within these limitation Famous authors, like that Sun Also Rises guy, are respected for their lean, taut, economical prose, the way they eschew obfuscation. It is not widely known that they had no choice in the matter.
Others take small revenge on the world, like a Plaguey Mary or whatever her name was, infecting others with new vocabulary in every other sentence- satisfying themselves while conducting arson on the verbal pyres of innocent bystanders.
By now it should be clear. that I am one of these.
It was Fid that did it. I promise, that’s the last one I’ll inflict on you, unless you have the vocabulary of a Philistine.
A Fid, it seems, is at conical piece of bone or wood used to work with rope, as is found on a Marlinspike. (Sorry, non-sailors.) I was innocently leafing through Clifford Ashley’s Book of Knots, left so innocently on a coffee table in Maine. Beware Clifford Ashley’s Book of Knots. You may know about the Sheepshank, the Bowline, the clove hitch. My apologies if you didn’t. Even so, this devilish tone is chockablock with useless arcana.
There I was, marveling at the clarity of the diagrams, the specificity of the uses, the stream of new words.
New Words.
At that point my hostess offered me an appetizer, a lovely thing, a local oyster, with a sauce. What’s the sauce, I asked? “Oh, it’s a simple “_______” she said. “Vinegar, shallots, a little sugar.” It was a lovely, elegant little French word. I speak French, dammit. I’m fluent in French.
But I cannot utter that adorable little word. “Minuet” I’m forced to say. Waiters and hosts know what I mean, and the best manage to turn aside before sniggering. But others, sweet helpful souls, they try to teach me the mot juste, and are baffled when I can’t fit it in my mouth.
In these situations, where the host is gracious and prone to speak in Italics, I ask for horseradish, for lemon, for cocktail sauce for god’s sake.
But I long for minuet.
(Copyright 2025 – Noah Shlaes)