Technology can be so time consuming. The situation: friends from here are currently in Scotland. We are still here. While e-mailing, the two wifely persons start using I.M. They then talk about establishing a video link. I suggest just calling the hotel and making contact the old-fashioned way. About an hour later, fully dressed for blackberry picking and putting in time with e-mail until the girls are ready, I hear, "We've done it," as if a moon landing had been achieved. The "it" turned out to be sound comparable to broadcasts from the moon, and no video connection. But it wasn't a telephone call and thus our budget wasn't entirely dumfungled.
May I recommend to your attention, "absquatulate," and other coinages of the 1830s that I found at http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm ?
The 1830's, the site explains, were "a period of great vigour and expansiveness in the US — was also a decade of inventiveness in language, featuring a fashion for word play, obscure abbreviations, fanciful coinages, and puns. Only a few inventions of that period have survived to our times, such as sockdologer, skedaddle and hornswoggle. Among those that haven’t lasted the distance were blustrification (the action of celebrating boisterously), goshbustified (excessively pleased and gratified), and dumfungled (used up)" ?
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
