Teapots, buttons or Coca-Cola signs — if it exists, someone will collect it.
I collect words.
“Osmosis,” for example. Forget its biology-based first and second definitions in Webster’s. Go straight to the third definition, the one that describes a “seemingly effortless absorption of ideas, feelings, attitudes.”
We learn two ways, especially when we’re children. One is through instruction and study. The other involves an absorption of knowledge that takes place every day, a process so subtle we’re not even aware of it. We learn by osmosis. That, and bad experiences that give us a really big smack and definitely are not an example of learning by osmosis.
“Miasma” is a word I liked a lot better before I learned exactly what it meant. I thought it sounded wispy, delicate. Yep, “vapor rising as from marshes or decomposing animal or vegetable matter” is bound to be wispy. And delicate.
Here’s a word I just happened to run across: “fogdog.” It’s “a bright spot seen at the horizon as a fog starts to dissipate.” “Fogdog” doesn’t sound like a bright spot to me, but more like something hunkering in the shadows.
I always liked the word “trinket,” applied to an inexpensive ornament or piece of jewelry. I also liked the trinkets themselves. I had fake jewelry all over the place — literally —when I was a little girl. It didn’t take long for the gem in a 59 cent “diamond” ring to wind up in one room and its setting in another. My “pearls” always came unstrung; my pop beads popped their last soon after purchase. I’ll say one thing, though. I got the good out of every single one of those 59 pennies. Life was meant to be lived, dollinks.
Another favorite was “cotillion.” I was always reading some novel set in the past in which young ladies would attend cotillions, or balls. They always got to dance with handsome young military officers. Yes, “cotillion” was good. “Sock hop” just didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
“Mississippi” is a great word. I used to listen to “Mississippi Delta” on the B side of “Ode to Billy Joe,” and Bobbie Gentry would sing “M-i-double s-i-double s-i-double p-i.” As she belted that out in her raspy voice, I felt like I really was right there in the Mississippi Delta.
Another Bobbie Gentry song had one of my favorite words of all time in it. “Copasetic.” I know exactly what copasetic means, beyond its definition of “good, fine, excellent.”
For me, it describes those moments when your own little planets have aligned and you are at peace with the world and, most importantly, with yourself. It’s the feeling of complete relaxation that follows an afternoon in the pool, when, freshly showered, and dressed in your favorite pair of well-worn jeans and an old, soft shirt, you turn on some blues, put your feet up and just drift.
You have just entered the delta zone, and it’s all copasetic now.
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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@tribtown.com.

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