It somehow reminded me of Harry Potter and Google at the same time. A mouthful to say, not remotely jovial in meaning but a funny sounding word indeed! Although I did not quite agree with the context it was written for, the sheer fact that it flitted on to my phone screen unexpectedly made it seem like an inquisitive butterfly rather than a pesky mosquito.
For many years my lexicon had been focused on PG-13 English, in Orange County California, where we did piano and soccer, robotics and cricket, Spanish and Hindi, pasta and orange chicken. All that running around left no time to spare for the world of Boys Scouts, which incidentally would have reminded me of the word occasionally, given the etymology *.
The word did not have any cool, high-scoring alphabets like J or Z, so hadn’t been on any Scrabble boards that I could recollect. My lack of consistent reading in recent years made it all the more scarce, and I had not heard it on the radio either. I believe it was missing in action on the SAT vocabulary list as well. So, the other day when it made an appearance on a text message it almost felt like an old friend had shown up to say Hello!
And though the context it was written in hinted a tad bit of disappointment, it made me smile inwardly, prompted a flow of thoughts and some etymology research. I could not help but write and share…..but for all I know, you’ll consider this a boondoggle blog post after all!
(*) Apparently the word was the name of the newspaper of a Boy Scouts troop and the name of a uniform decoration. The context here is the more commonly known meaning of the word boondoggle, which is an initiative that is considered a waste of time and money!
Interesting read and captivating writing. Kept me curious until the end to find out about the actual word 🙂
Interesting word – hadn’t heard about it before
Good to read your feedback!