05. My Freakish Talent
Good morning, John.
I have a kind of remarkable skill that I've never talked about here on Vlogbrothers. Spent a lifetime time of work to master it, it requires a truly mesmerizing amount of muscle control in my mouth and throat and abdomen. It can be beautiful, it can be terrifying, depending on my mood, and only one out of every 8.7 million species on earth can do it. Possibly the most remarkable thing I am capable of doing, I am doing right now. Talking. WORDS! Noises come out of my mouth! And I direct them at people. And then the people are like "Yeah I'll meet you at Buffalo Wild Wings at 7." It's a miracle. And it's kind of a miracle we don't notice how remarkable this ability is. And we have words for everything!
Like, just look around. This is a book, it's called a book. But there's more words here. This is paper and this is cardstock. This is embossed, it's a embossed cover. This is a spine, there's blurbs on it. Blurb! Blurb is a word! This is a llama head stitched to the body of an elephant theres a word for that. This thing, put it around your neck, theres a word for it. Lanyard! What – who – came – wha t-- why? We have words for words. Nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs. And words for words that mean the same things as other words. And words for things that are the opposite meanings of other words. We have so many words that there are some words that mean the opposite of themselves! Inflammable means both very easy to catch on fire and very hard to catch on fire. Sanguine means both cheerful and bloodthirsty.
Good news though, we have a word for when words mean the opposite of the thing that they mean. But if we didn't have a word for it, there would still be a word for it because we have a word for when there isn't a word for a thing. Yeah, take so time to think about that. It is so unusual to encounter a situation in which you don't have a word for a thing that most people don't even know there is a word for when the thing doesn't have a word for it. We have a word for the best possible word to use in any given situation which means that if you need the best possible word to describe the best possible word, it describes itself.
In fact there are a number of words that describe themselves. A noun is a noun. 'Cutsey' sounds kind of adorable. 'Magniloquent' means grandiose and also sounds grandiose. 'Polysyllabic' is polysyllabic, 'unhyphenated' is unhyphenated, and at one point the word 'coined' was coined. You will not, probably, be surprised to find that there is a word for words that describe themselves. And that word is autological and it is also autological in that it describes itself. Blbhblbhh!
That's not the hard part though. The hard part is that autological has an antonym which is heterological, and heterological doesn't describe itself because it doesn't describe itself. But it does describe itself because--so it's autologic but if it's not autologic, it's not autological because it's heterological so if it's hetero--but if it is heterological then it is autological. [groans, burps] Luckily, we got a word for that too.
Last year, John and I conducted a census of nerdfighteria because we wanted to know more about this community, and we wanted this community to know more about itself. Also it helps us decide what to focus our time on, where we might go on tour, what new shows to be thinking about doing.
The general goal of the census is to make nerdfighteria a better place. So if you have time - -and it does take some time, like 10 to 30 minutes, it's not an insignificant little survey; there are some real questions on it that we really want you to answer--then check the link in the description and fill out the census. We will be very thankful. And it will be making this community better!
Also in the doobly-doo there's a link to nerdfighteria.com, where you can sign up for a weekly newsletter, which you should do because it will keep you informed on all sorts of amazing things going on in the world. And a list of nerdfighter events that are happening all over the world that YOU can participate in. Thank you all for being a part of this community and for putting up with me being confused about words.
John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
Grand, mad, madniloquent. Grandiloquent. Grandilo--grah, ahhh! Possible word then did jus jut ahhh cckah hahahaa--this! Is, oh! And that word is autogihblahhohah.
