confession

so, i am kind of a 'word addict'. i used to subscribe to 'word 'o' the day' emails from merriam-webster.com. nerdy, i know. (another true confession--i do have a WOTD widget on my iGoogle homepage. there, it's out.)*

while at fhe tonight, a couple of friends and i got involved in this discussion of perspective and the nuances of various words. i.e. does not staying in any relationship for long classify one as "shallow" and "superficial"? my friend held that opinion; i disagreed, but that's neither here nor there. what the conversation evolved to was one's own perception and how it affected everything. i proffered the theory (which i've heard vaguely somewhere)--for the sake of the discussion and not necessarily embraced by me--that the only 'reality' that exists is what one has experienced and everything else is a facade, hypothetical, theoretical, etc. to which he replied, "well, if you're a solipsist, i can see that theory would hold true."

huh?

crickets.

brain churning. here was a word i've never heard before. stunned, i chose to ignore my ignorance and moved on in the conversation, but silently promising myself to look it up once i got home. cowardly, eh?

so here you go , my dear readers. expand your vocabulary and save yourselves from conversational cowardice:


(clickety-click here): solipsist





*todays WOTD is 'straddle'