Potamology

If I hadn't already written about being pleasantly surprised by the 'Supergirl' movie, that is what I would be doing right now. As it is, this whole post lies here, wide open to the possibilities of everything. The wonder of the great open page, so often a scourge to those in a worse frame of mind. Maybe it's time to ruminate on the great structure of the brain, and the safeguards contained therein to prevent us from going mad at the mad flux of being alive? Maybe it's time to contemplate the great disconnect between what we want to do and what we actually do, and the dissonance that stalks the spaces between those two things?

On the other hand, we could diverge into the welcome word reservoir of the Phrontistery, that great collection of unusual and lesser used vocabulary, always so tempting as a resource when all else fails. It's not that nothing has happened in the last few days to provide Muffin fodder, but that it's always nicer to be more philosophical and less personal in the great and invisible expanse of the Internet. Why talk about bizarre trips to the Job Centre, and odd new Draconian practices being imposed down upon us at the village library when you could just as easily do a snap mention of the word 'potamology'.

potamology: study of rivers

Some time ago, in the past of humanity, we used many more words. There were things to be said about rivers that required the introductions of whole new terminologies for every portion of the stretch of a river. According to the greatness of Wikipedia, the source of the river coincides with the 'crenon' zone, was then followed by the 'rhithron', and finally the 'potamos' as the settled remaining slow portion of the watercourse. As with most English language words, it has carried down from the old Greek 'potamos' or 'ποταμός'. Oh, Greek, where would we be without all your loan words, if not wandering about aimlessly and having to point at half the things we want and mouth 'ugg' for lack of nouns of verbs?

Some disused words just roll around luxuriously in your head when you discover them, begging to be used. Could I write a story around the word 'potamology'? Could I? There are still new phases of 'Wordspace' and 'Triangles' lined up, waiting to be kicked off sometime before the end of the world. Is there time to be self-indulgent about a word? Is there anything more worthy of indulgence than a word? Of all the luxuries in the world, is there anything more harmless than an obscure word? Discuss, and send me your reports within a week. All disagreeing papers will be eliminated in the approved manner. Gosh, this is old school, getting back to the obscure words early days of the Quirky Muffin, with not a mention of ridiculous travails. It's nice.

O.