Monday, September 24, 2018

Meticulation

I don't even know how we got to it.  Oh, yes I do. We were eating a bowl of watermelon. Sean had cut up this massive half-watermelon into these perfectly even cubes, and I remarked on it.

JEN: Look at that, such perfect cubes.

SEAN: Yeah, well, cutting things into evenly-sized pieces is important for cooking them evenly.
 

JEN: Yeah. Me, it's *HACK* *CUT* *LAZY SLICE* and they're all skiwampus.   It's a credit to your...hmm.. meticulousness.
 

SEAN: Meticulousness.
JEN: We can do better than that.
And we spent the next several minutes trying to come up with a better word for a noun version of "meticulous."  I went first:


JEN: Meticulation. Meticulicity
 

SEAN: Meticulineity

Trying a different route, I said,


"Ok, let's think of other adjectives that end in 'ous.'  Industrious.  Illustrious.   Illustration. Meticulation.  But see, illustration does not pertain to illustrious."

SEAN: Right. That would be illustrative. 

JEN: Oh, meticulative! I like that!  
 

SEAN: But wait, that's just another adjective.
 

JEN: Oh right, I forgot what we were doing. 
*time passes*
Here's one: Adventurous... adventure.  Meticulature.  I like that one. Or, chivalrous.  Chivalry. 

SEAN: Meticul...y. 

JEN: I feel like it needs more.  Meticularity. This makes sense with 'hilarious' as well. Hilarity.


SEAN: What about words that just end in 'us,'  instead of 'ous, or ious.'  Discus.  Mucus.


JEN, thinking: nope...they're all nouns. Abacus.  Proboscis. Does that end in an 'i'?

SEAN:  laughs and repeats "proboscis."

JEN: what?

SEAN: Proboscis is not a word I think about much.

JEN: I do, I think about it all the time, ever since I learned I was saying it completely wrong.  


*Looks it up on phone*

JEN: Here it is. Wait, how did I say it? Pro-BOS-cuss? That's how I said it, right? I used to say it, 'ProBIScuss'  I had no idea there wasn't even an 'i' there. It shattered my world.


*Hits the pronunciation thing on the google search and the girl's all, "Pro-BOSS-iss"*

JEN: WHAT? Oh, OK, I've been saying it wrong STILL!  Forget it! Apparently it's 'pro-boss-is!' I don't know anything!

*clicks on it two more times.*


PRONUNCIATION GIRL: Pro-boss-iss.  Pro-boss-iss. 

*Shaking my head*

JEN: Well anyway, what did we decide? I liked meticulation. 

SEAN: Meticulineity.

2 comments:

Joel said...

This is absolutely a conversation I would have. I like meticulaity, personally. Or meticulaeity, if we want to be pretentious.

It also reminds me of my favorite personally coined word, bastardocity, or the quality of being a bastard.

)en said...

I really like meticulaeity. As many vowels in a row as we can get, I say! Bastardocity is excellent and I will try using it in a sentence first chance I get.