Defugalty vs. Difficulty

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura McCabe from Wasa, Wisconsin.

Hello, Laura. How you doing?

Hi, Laura.

Hi, I’m doing well, thanks. How are you?

Super duper.

Pretty good.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

So, my dad used to use a word when I was little that I haven’t been able to find in any dictionary. It’s difuglety. And it’s a great word, and he kind of uses it like, oh, what a mess, what a mishap, what a difuglety. And it’s such a great word. And I started using it as an adult and people would look at me basically cross-eyed because they had no idea what I was talking about. And I’ve just been able to find it in any dictionary. So I was wondering if you guys had any ideas as to where it came from and why it isn’t in any dictionary. Is there anything else?

Difugulty. Is that how he says it?

Difugulty, yes.

Difugulty. And how would you spell that, Laura, if you were forced to?

If I was to guess, I think D-I-F-U-G-A-L-T-Y.

That’s not bad.

I’ve seen it spelled that way.

Yeah, you know what? This is just a silly mispronunciation of the word difficulty. You’re having difficulty with the word difficulty.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense now that you say that.

Yeah, sometimes people spell it D-E-F instead of D-I-F.

Yeah, I’m counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different spellings at least. There’s probably more that I missed.

So it’s just a silly way to say a silly word about a silly situation?

Well, it’s to have a difficulty with the word difficulty.

So you’re making a joke about difficulty, right?

Yeah, does that square with your dad’s personality?

That sounds right up his alley, yeah.

-huh.

Good.

-huh.

Is he a jokester?

He is.

He is the funniest thing.

So it’s got a good 120 years of history behind it. You can find it in the late 1800s easily in old texts. And it’s almost always presented as a jokey word by a jokey person or in a humorous situation. Occasionally, I have seen it appear in like minutes and like some official proceeding. And I’m not quite sure what’s happening with that because it should be the word difficulty. And I just wonder if the person taking the minutes didn’t know what they were doing and misspelled the word.

But that’s funny. When I’ve asked him about it before, he thought it was a totally different word. So I wonder if somebody that used it around him when he was little knew the context and he just took it at its face. But it perfectly fits with his personality.

You know, it’s funny. There is some evidence that it has split off far enough from difficulty where it just means a small inconsistency or problem or something that’s not quite right rather than like a major difficulty. It’s not like your car won’t start. It’s more like you left the window down when you shouldn’t have something like that.

You put the keys in the refrigerator.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that’s perfect. And thank you so much. That makes perfect sense to me.

Clears it up, huh?

Thanks, Laura.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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