It Feels Like...Another Weird Word Day

So, yeah. It's been awhile since I posted one of these. Sunday being a day of rest and all, where you don't work and you don't play and--above all else!--you don't blog. I'm pretty sure that's in the Book of Leviticus somewhere. Right by the rule about not eating camels.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bookcase to put together.

Ha, I'm kidding. Well, not about the bookcase. I have to do that, which is why I'm here, avoiding any semblance of real work. So long as my fingers are dancing over the keys, then they don't have to be tapping fasteners into the panels of the bookcase.

Do yourself a favor and re-read that last sentence. That, my friends, is what I call fine writing. It's like a spectacle crafted out of words. What? A train wreck is a spectacle, too. So, it's not like I was lying to you about it.

This week's weird word is one you've all seen way too often, especially around here. And yet, I loves it like the Precious. The word is "indefatigable".

Indefatigable means "tireless, inexhaustible" or "unable or seemingly unable to be fatigued". It comes from the prefix in-, which in this case means "not", and a second prefix de-, which is used to intensify the root word -fatig-, itself coming from the Latin fatigare, "to weary" (check it out, a first conjugation verb!). Hang the suffix -able on there for good measure in order to add the "capable of" meaning, and you've got yourself a mouthful of wordy goodness.

There's the origin of the word, but how did I come about using it as my own epithet? Originally, my "screen name" had been my real name, and then for "anonymity's sake" I decided to go with the rather blase and bland mjenks. After a few months of being utterly and completely bored with my own name (I've only been seeing it for the 33 and a half years), I thought I'd toss in something new. Since I'm a bit of an egomaniac, I added "the incomparable" at the beginning of my name and went around commenting in people's blogs as such for about a month. I then opted to change it to "the incorrigible", because, well, that's a pretty apt descriptor, too. Along about the time I changed it to "the incorrigible", one of my first loyal readers, Chemgeek, posted an entry to his blog about the "Word of the Day" and the word was "indefatigable."

Being the clever wordophile smartass that I am, I dashed off three different definitions for the word, none of which were "tireless". A few days later, I quietly changed the epithet from "the incorrigible" to "the indefatigable". About a week later, college football season kicked off, and since I'm an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, I thought it would be clever to capitalize only the ND and of "indefatigable". That is how the screen name has evolved into what you see before you.

Using it in a book won't be too difficult, especially since I've got armies marching to and fro. They'll seem "indefatigable" in their efforts to get from one place to another, or to scale the walls of a besieged city. Also, the lead female protagonist will be "indefatigable" in her efforts to protect her home and her family, all the while she tries to raise the status of her husband's home city to what she thinks it should become. Oh, yeah, and then there's the whole main plot of the story in which she is integral. So, yes, Lillian will be quite indefatigable as she tries desperately to bring about the conclusion of the tale.