Some words just trip off the tongue – like the one I’ve just learned – sesquipedalian; or, given to using long or ponderous words. It feels great! Seems slightly synonymous with German.
 
Other words and expressions trip me up. Take “to pull no punches” for example. I had to look it up because although it’s a familiar expression, I didn’t really know what it meant. To “pull a punch” is from boxing and means to not put your full force into it – so “to pull no punches” means give it everything you’ve got. Nuke it.
 
Then I tripped on ‘discomfit’. I suppose it is part of my passive vocabulary. One of the words I have read and recognise as genuine English but have never actually used actively.
discomfit, transitive verb:
1. To make uneasy or perplexed, or to put into a state of embarrassment; to disconcert; to upset.
2. To thwart; to frustrate the plans of.
3. {Archaic} To defeat in battle.
 
Talking of defeat, I then stubbed my toe on ‘take the flak’. I had a loose, stringy idea of what flack was, something like a cross between flax and {cut him some} slack.
 
Flak
1) Anti-aircraft fire, esp. as experienced by the crews of combat airplanes at which the fire is directed.
2) Criticism; hostile reaction; abuse: Such an unpopular decision is bound to draw a lot of flak from the press.
[Origin: 1935–40; Fl(ieger)a(bwehr)k(anone) anti-aircraft gun, equiv. to Flieger aircraft (lit., flyer) + Abwehr defense + Kanone gun.
 
Reading an article in the Guardian online about the late Bobby Fischer, it was the use of a word that caused me to pause. I was going to say ‘stuck in my throat'; but that is too strong an expression for the feeling. It just made me feel slightly uneasy. Discomfited me; made me want to give the journalist, a bit of flak.
“Fischer didn't play in any of the great tournaments after 1972; promoters wanted him to play exhibitions, but he demanded exorbitant fees and they never took place; he even refused numerous lucrative offers to endorse products, saying he couldn't; because he didn't use them.”
Perhaps I am a tad linguistically or semantically hypersensitive, but it seems to me that the word “even,” here, suggests that it is a sign of madness to not accept large sums of money for endorsing products one doesn’t use. Honesty is no longer even a social option.
Céline Dion came on the telly last night, singing a song from her latest album in English. The song was beautiful, but the sentiment behind the lyrics was in total opposition to everything we know about her. It was about taking the risk of living love in the moment with someone you’ve just met – and she is happily married to her manager who has been the man of her life since she was about twelve.
Back to the man who invented his own form of chess, “Fischerandom", in which, at the beginning of the game, the pieces are randomly distributed. Conventional chess, he said, was played out; killed by computers and over-analysis. Psychologically, he had to believe that chess died with him; the last, undefeated champion. In a way, perhaps it did."{!?}
"Fischerandom" {the chess variant}, would effectively stymie {aha!}; 'FYI,' the "Scotch gambit" opening, is, in French - l'ouverture ecossaise.
 
Which leads on to a quote from Thomas Henry Huxley:
“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.” And to think that "Huxley," {if my memory serves me correctly}, either, pre-dated, or long pre-dated, chess on the Internet, where a player's annonimity{sp?}, is an almost given!; How prescient!!

thanks for this message! Fun to read. jackflanders