All Posts Tagged With: "words"
Irregular Word of the Week: Ganser Syndrome
This is an Irregular Word of the Week post both because the word itself is irregular and because I irregularly post words of the week, which makes the title of “Word of the Week” a lie.
Today I learned the phrase “Ganser Syndrome” from a cynical 1957 Time Magazine review of Jack Kerouac’s most famous novel, On the Road.
A pseudo-psychotic condition typically occurring in individuals feigning insanity and characterized by wrong but related answers to questions.
Left to Right: Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs. Did they all suffer/prosper from Ganser Syndrome?
Wedgies and Words
One of the most significant things I learned from traveling is that my thoughts are limited by the words in my language(s). You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s hard to translate,” before. Some notions exist verbally in some languages and not others. Usually these translations involve subtleties, but sometimes it can be entire ideas, as well. If an idea is hard to translate from one language to another, imagine how hard it is to individually generate this idea if your language does not even have words to describe the idea!
A very crude personal illustration:
I was walking in Central Park with my German friend, when I found myself suffering from a wedgie. I asked him if we could stop a moment so I could pick it. Puzzled, he asked what a wedgie was. My explanation began, “Well, a wedgie is when your underwear gets shoved up your ass—and it usually happens while you are walking.” He paused a moment and then a lightbulb went off: “Oh, you mean, ‘Arsch frisst Hose!’” I then paused a moment, and said, “Yes, yes. ‘Ass eats pants.’” What was really astounding to me was that my whole life I considered the underwear as the “actor” in the wedgie process—the underwear shoves itself up the ass—, whereas my German friend saw the ass as the cause of the wedgie, while the underwear passively shoved by…
Moral of the story: the word “wedgie” is very limiting to explain the phenomenon of underwear being eaten by your ass.
**Shoutout to Billy Joe—who is finally getting his passport stamped for the first time this winter. I’m so happy for you!