Words that get stuck in your head like jingles

by phil on Tuesday May 11, 2010 6:18 PM
wordplay

Just as you get tunes stuck in your head, I'll get fixated on a word for a couple days. Sometimes it's because the word has an uncommon or tricky combination of phonemes, like "Laver" as in Rod Laver (Lah-Vuhr). Othertimes, the word has an unknown meaning or silly sound, like "nagadocious." (I tried to Google it, but I still don't get it). Sometimes a turn-of-phrase will tickle me, like how I've been saying, "I'm on a tear with my blog," or "I've been on a tear lately, blazing through every episode of The Wire." I also went through phases of repeating "epinephrine," usually as an adjective to replace "stressful," i.e. "Talking to clients is such an epinephric experience!"

This internal wordplay is probably just a side effect of a mind that is constantly re-learning language.