A Kid In Italy Invented A New Word, Which Makes Me Happy

A petaloso moment in my St. Albans, Vermont
garden last summer. 

Language rules often don't make sense, and there's always a need for new words, in my opinion. Or at least revamped words.

For instance, I've always complained that you can have sunny days, but you can't have moony nights. Why? Must a night with a full moon in the sky be described as "moonlit?"  

What about butterflies? Shouldn't they be called flutterbys? After all, that's what they do.

This is why I found a soulmate in an elementary school kid in Italy. His name is Matteo, mine is Matt, so maybe that's a sign we have the same mentality.

What happened was, his teacher was mystified by a word Matteo used in a writing assignment. It was "petaloso."

It's an Italian word that doesn't really exist, at least not yet, in any Italian dictionary.

The word is a combination of "petalo," meaning petals with the suffix "-oso" meaning full of.

Matteo, 8, used the word "petaloso" when describing a flower that was full of petals. The word totally makes sense.

Matteo's teacher said his use of the word "petalolso" was wrong because the word, at least up until that point, didn't really exist. But next to her red "X" she wrote that Matteo made a "beautiful mistake."

I'll say.

Now, there's a drive to make the word "petaloso" an official word in the Italian dictionary. Hell, it belongs in English dictionaries, too, in my opinion.

The drive to make "petaloso" a word got an early boost when Matteo, with the help of us teacher, wrote to the Accademia delia Crusca, the institution that oversees the use of the Italian language, to ask for their opinion, reports the BBC.

The reply soon came from one of the Accademia leading linguists: "The word you invented is well formed and could be used in the Italian language..It is beautiful and clear.'

However, in order for a word to be a real part of the Italian language, a large proportion of the population must use it and understand its definition.

The linguist from the Accademia wrote Matteo: "If you manage to spread the word among many people who start saying, 'What a petaloso flower this is!', then petaloso will have become a word in Italian."

So Matteo and his teacher started spreading the word, and I'm happy to report "petaloso" has gone viral. The word has been used at least 80,000 times on Facebook and 40,000 on Twitter, says the BBC. 

As noted, I think "petaloso" should become a word in the English language, too. Many English words are derived from others in different languages, and this one would work, too.

Spring is just around the corner. My perennial gardens will soon (I hope!) explode with a wide variety of flowers. In other words, my gardens will be petaloso. It's a beautiful word that I hope to use  many more times in the future.

A Blog Post Full of Really Bad Words

The ever-helpful New York Department of Education has alerted us about some really bad words that offend people. They want them banned, at least from standardized test. But let's go for broke and ban them altogether.

Here are some of the nasty words dinosaur, Halloween,  birthday, dancing, homes with swimming pools, running away, rap music, rock music, and disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes

A kid dressed as a dinosaur for Halloween, thereby
offending the N.Y. Dept. of Education in two ways.

There's a "logic" to the Ed Department's wish to scrub the words from standardized test. "Dinosaur" suggests evolution, which would offend some religious types who don't believe in it. "Birthday" is bad because Jehovah's Witnesses would be offended because they don't celebrate birthdays.

"Halloween" is bad because it suggests paganism. The house with the swimming pool is a no-no because it suggests rich people, which could inspire jealousy. And people are afraid of disasters, so keep those out, too.

CNN reached out to Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg, who thinks the N.Y. Ed. Department is being stupid. (By the way, "stupid" is probably a banned word too. Says Wineburg:

"The purpose of education is to create unpleasant experiences in us. ... The Latin meaning if education is 'to go out.'  Education is not about making us feel warm and fuzzy inside."

Wineburg questioned the idea that the New York City Department of Education would want to "shield kids from these types of encounters."  He said the goal of education is to "prepare them," adding "this is how we dumb down public schools."

Geez, though, I think any word can offend anybody out there.  Maybe we should ban all kinds of words. I have some suggestions.   The word "the" offends me, since it's used so much and I'm sick of it. I have the same problem with words like "and" "it," "a" and "of."

So we just ban words completely, just so we don't offend anybody.

How Words Have Power

Hat tip to Rick Wold on Facebook for alerting me to the viral video in this post that's actually been up for a year or so.

As the notes below the video say, it "illustrates the power of words to radically change your message and the your effect upon the world."

Yes, the video turns out to be an advertisement for a company that helps people and companies offer a better Web presense, but the short film is certainly poignant enough to watch.

"Pumped Up Kicks" Kicks

The radio stations have been playing the song "Pumped Up Kicks"  by a group called Foster the People ad nauseum lately.

Overplayed, yes, but it's just the type of song (or any art, for that matter) that I like.



The song's melody has a breezy, frothy pink bubblegum, summer singalong type of vibe. You don't notice the lyrics at first.

Then it hits you:

"All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun…”
“All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”

The song is about some kid who feels put upon, and decides to massacre a lot of people with a gun.

No, I don't advocate violence. But I do love how contradictory the package is. Dark, grim lyrics set to a happy, mellow soundtrack.

So much of life is straightforward. Which is good. Who wants to be confused? But in entertainment and art, there's nothing better than starkly conflicting emotions.

One of my favorite songs is "Every Breath You Take" by The Police from way back in '83. A lot of people mistake the tune for a nice love song. And the melody suggests that. But it's from the perspective of a stalker, really. "Every breath you take/I'll be watching you."

And of course, many stalkers think they're creepy actions are love, or something but they're scary. A brillant song.

There's another song, by Elvis Costello, called "Watching the Detectives" It's got one of the best, contradictory lines in pop music: "She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake."

So, readers, do you have any other songs, or other types of art that fit this genre. Send in a comment. We'll dish.

Boobs Againsts Haboobs

There's some people in Phoenix, Arizona that are upset over the haboobs that have hit the city this month.

Some people in Arizona say we shouldn't call dust
storms like this "haboobs"

Haboobs are big dust storms and I can see why they're upsetting. Imagine vacuuming the house after one of those things.

But the dust is the least of the problem for some of these people, it turns out. They don't like people calling these dust storms haboobs. And the problem isn't because the word "haboob" prompts lots of snickers from middle school age boys.

No, haboob is an Arabic word and since, according to a few people, we're supposed to hate all things Middle Eastern, we should not use that word, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. 

Not many people feel this way, of course, but I love the logic of them anyway.  There are a few Middle Eastern terrorists we need to get rid of, for sure. And many Middle Eastern countries aren't exactly oases of human rights and democratic, transparent governments. Apparently, saying "haboob" gives comfort and support to terrorists. To solve those problems, we should stop saying "haboob."

Right.

Yes, some Middle Eastern issues are problematic. One critic in the Times article wondered how a soldier would feel after coming home from Iraq and hearing the word "haboob."  We don't need to be reminded of those awful towel heads, the critic seems to be saying.

My guess is said soldier wouldn't really care about the origins of the word "haboob" He would probably say. "Great. Not another #&%*!*!! dust storm."

Linguists also note that expunging Arabic words from the language, if we wanted to be pure about it, would be inconvenient. We would no longer be allowed to say "algebra." Actually, I'm for that. I hate algebra. But we'd also be unable to say, for instance "zero," "pajamas" and "khaki."

Call those dust storms in Arizona just dust storms if you want. But if you call them "haboobs" I don't think that will worsen terrorism or political tensions in the Middle East, do you?  Maybe we should not concentrate on "haboobs" and instead keep plugging away at the messier job of  fighting terrorism and encouraging democracy in the Middle East.