FEATURE: Man With Spizzerinctum Finds Unusual Words
By Gregory Crawford
CHICAGO (Reuters) - William F. Buckley Jr., are you out there?
Kevin Johnson, curator of an intriguing and curious Web page, wants to
know what the conservative columnist and standardbearer of the English
language
thinks of his page (http://www.spizzerinctum.com).
Spizzer what, you ask? Spizzerinctum, of course -- you know, the will
to succeed, as personified in sports stars like basketball's Michael
Jordan, business
tycoons like Ted Turner and politicians like, yes, Bill Clinton.
Johnson, a freelance journalist when he is not scouring dictionaries
and other word books for unusual but real words to describe current
news events,
launched his Web site last April after an attempt at creating a daily
syndicated newspaper column of unusual words fizzled out.
He starts his day by taking in the morning news items from radio,
television and the Internet and chooses a story that will likely be a
highlight in the next
day's newspapers. Then he scours specialized dictionaries such as "The
Endangered English Dictionary," word books such as "The Logo
Daedalian's
Dictionary of Interesting and Unusual Words" and standard dictionaries
such as the great Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Webster's Third
International.
He keeps a list of potential candidates for the site.
WHAT IS GOING TO BE TOMORROW'S TOP STORY?
"I really try to pick a news event that is likely to show up in
somebody's paper tomorrow as a news story," Johnson told Reuters in an
interview. "Then I
look through words I have and make some sort of free association that
works."
Like using "remugient" (ree-MYOO-gee-unt) to describe the dramatic
rebound in U.S. stocks on Oct. 28 after an equally dramatic decline
the day before.
Johnson's Web site story: "With remugient defiance, the bull market
reappeared Tuesday -- at least for a day -- posting a record gain on
record volume of
1.19 billion shares."
-- Jay Thomas (w)617-576-4832 ICQ:5270335 Network Manager (b)617-546-2444 jpthomas@ix.netcom.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.