FITTY-CENT WORDS

Once in a while, I trot out the Big Words. Not too often, because people have a tendency to take me to task for it. Puttin’ on airs, and all.

Today at breakfast with the Minyan Boyz, I used the word “anthropomorphize.” It was in the context of a discussion of the nature of God. We Jews use the term shekhina to refer to the “feminine aspect” of God’s spirit – the nurturing, caring, merciful facet of divine behavior. The point I was making so eloquently at the time was that referring to any aspect of God by invoking human characteristics such as “feminine” or “masculine” is anthropomorphizing: attributing human qualities to something that is not human.

We do this with animals. How often do we say that a cat “loves” us? Or that a dog is “smiling”? These are human characteristics – useful as descriptors, perhaps, but misleading if we truly believe them to be expressive of human qualities.

Similarly, the nature of God is fundamentally a mystery, one that lends itself to anthropomorphism. An example: the biblical Priestly Blessing, in which we say “Yisa Hashem panav eilekhah v’yasem l’kha shalom” - May God cause His countenance to shine upon you and grant you peace. Can God really be said to have a face? We attribute human qualities to the Master of the World in an attempt to understand, to know the unknowable. How far we carry that attribution forms the essential dividing line between the Jewish and Christian belief systems...but this really was not meant to be a religious post.

We were talking about Big Words.

And yes, I got the Raised Eyebrows and Snarky Comments for using that Fitty-Cent Word. That’s OK; I can take it.

But we English-speakers are pikers when it comes to the All-Time Champeens of the Fitty-Cent Word: the Germans.

German is a great language for taking several semi-related concepts and mashing them together to make a Really Big-Ass Word. Anyone who tries to read a German scientific journal knows what I’m talking about – but this business of Big Words is not confined to the world of Science.

Americans got a taste of this some years back, when Volkswagen came out with their “Fahrvergnügen” campaign. Fahr-vergnügen: literally, “driving enjoyment.” A funny-sounding, attention-getting word that was a bitch to pronounce – and advertising is all about the attention-getting.

But you can make up your own German words. Just mash a few concepts together, and presto! A brand-new, fitty-cent word. F’rinstance:

• Pflaumensafttrinkenvergnügen: the joy of drinking prune juice.
  
• Käfervernichtungvergnügen: the joy of killing cockroaches.
  
• Unterwasserschwimmenvergnügen: the joy of swimming underwater.
  
• Schimpfwörtergebrauchenvergnügen: the joy of using foul language.
  
• Senftmanngeschichtenlesenvergnügen: the joy of reading The Adventures of Mustard Man.

Hell, some of these are so long, they’re not fitty-cent words; they’re at least a buck-fitty.

What kind of Stupid Excessively-Long German Words can you come up with?