Wordplay Liberation

Some people like playing sports, some like playing musical instruments, and some like playing the ponies. Some like playing it safe while others like playing it fast and loose. Some like playing tricks on people and others only like playing by the rules.

Some people play favorites, others play well with others. Some people play down illnesses while others play on the vulnerabilities of others. A nervous person may play with her hair while a miser may play with the thermostat.

If you have not noticed, I like playing with words. I like punning, poeming, and perusing a thesaurus, and as you can see, I also like alliteration. A grammar check tells me there is no such word as “poeming,” but I am a rebel who likes toying with words and creating new ones.

I also like to dally with words that involve playing with words. For example, my favorite ambigram is “mom” because I prefer to think that when my kids roll their eyes and utter “Wow, Mom,” they merely express a strong feeling of pleasure, enthusiasm, and admiration. In my translation, I am a WOW sort of MOM.

Recently, I discovered aptronyms, personal names that aptly suit a person’s profession or personality, such as the poet William Wordsworth. Wikipedia has compiled a list of aptronyms, some ridiculously amusing, along with a list of inaptronyms, names that are ill-suited for their owners. To amuse myself, I invented a combo palindrome-aptronym for myself: Ana Motley.

Occasionally, I will create a portmanteau, an intentional blend of words that combines the spellings and meanings of two words, such as brunch, chortle, or smog. “Fleeping” means faking that you are asleep or avoiding conversation to prevent being aroused while falling asleep. While an anklet merges ankle with bracelet, an ID anklet with no engraving is a “blanklet.”

Crafting spoonerisms — switching the initial sounds of two or more words — is a fun challenge, too. Although the best linguist may accidentally make a slip of his or her tongue, doing it successfully on purpose is difficult. The best I could produce reads like a page from a Dr. Seus book: “Try to flee… fly up a tree!” Compare this to my “I’m going to bead in red,” spoken after an evening of too many beers.

Painting pictures using figurative language, especially similes, metaphors, and personification, is a fun exploration. When writing, I also want my words to be endearing and entertaining, meaningful and memorable, and stimulating and stirring. Sometimes I employ creative means that often result in words that flourish with fancy fantasy. (Did you notice the alliteration again?)

Here is a two-sentence sample: “Once upon a time in a land not so far away, lived a young strawberry blonde who loved to dress in flowers. Roses, though her favorites, were thorny, so she never donned those…” Suffice it to say, this fairy tale introduction never blossomed.

Inherently, I am a forever-blooming eclectic, one who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources. I own a kaleidoscope mind, one that is agile and flexible, one that is playful and able to see patterns, connections, and moveable parts. My personality is like a jigsaw puzzle consisting of small, irregularly cut pieces that fit together to form a complete and beautiful picture. (I am also a dissectologist because I am a person who enjoys putting jigsaw puzzles together.)

My writing style reflects and feeds from these characteristics and I am especially grateful when playing with words soothes me on difficult days. Exercising with words is therapy, a liberating antidote that relieves stress in a healthy, distractive way. Writing is a nourishing journey that allows me to color my world, view it with a fresh perspective, and create a supercalifragilistic vista.