Metagrobolized

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, have you been metagrobalized lately?

Yes, it was exciting. I’ve never felt that way before.

I imagine you haven’t.

What is it? I don’t know what it is.

It sounded kind of, I don’t know, naughty.

See? You are metagrobalized even as we speak.

That’s M-E-T-A-G-R-O-B-O-L-I-Z-E.

Metagrobalized.

The meta I can kind of get, but the grob is mysterious.

It’s mysterious because that’s what the word means.

It means to puzzle or mystify or confound.

I see. Very good.

You know, our quiz guys are the metagrobalizers of the show.

When you come up with big words like that, I feel gruntulous.

Do you know gruntulous?

No, but I’d be gruntled to learn what it means.

It’s related to the word grunt.

It’s just you can describe speech as being gruntulous.

They’re just like, urr, urr.

Such a big word.

Gruntulous demands for another beer.

Urr.

Gruntulous.

Do you know what gruntulous needs?

It needs a spokes.

I know.

S-P-O-X.

Do you know this word?

S-P-O-X?

Yeah, it’s like a headline-ese word for spokesperson.

Mainly British, but starting to appear in American newspapers.

Oh, that’s nice.

So you might say that the president’s ratings improved over the past week according to a spokes, S-P-O-X.

I assume it’s spokes.

I think it’s written and not usually pronounced.

Yeah.

So it’s just a nice shorthand.

Spokes.

Yeah, so gruntulous, an old word.

Spokes, S-P-O-X, a new word, right?

Nice, nice.

I mean, you’ve got to go fetch the old one sometimes.

And sometimes when you find the new word, you’re like, I’m going to embrace this.

I want to make this mine.

So spokes is my word of the week.

I like it.

Well, I’m going with metagrobalize.

And if a question about language has you metagrobalized, you know where to call 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.