Word Fugitives

Last October this page sought a word for a person "who, in looking up a word in the dictionary, is compelled to look across the page for another, equally interesting entry."

A number of readers thought of Webster surfer. Trish Anderton, of Berlin, New Hampshire, suggested word-dogging for the activity and used her coinage in a sentence: "Like a setter intent on sniffing out prey, she went word-dogging across the page." Ed Masten, of Memphis, wrote, "My own word search is often distracted by afliteration, like a bee in a bed of begonias." William R. Phillips, of Seattle, wrote, more ominously, "Some fear that excessive use of the dictionary leads to refer madness and is a gateway to stronger language."

Readers particularly liked travel-related coinages. Louis Greenwald, of Sacramento, wrote, "I have been doing that for years. I like to think of myself as a word traveler." Rob Longley, of Delmar, New York, wrote, "I think of myself as a speechcomber." Larry Malcus, of San Leandro, California, wrote, "I am afflicted with wanderlex." Steven L. Auslander, of Tucson, wrote, "If someone consulting the dictionary is doing so in order to add words to a spoken diatribe, he or she may be described as a hunter-blatherer. If, instead, he is genuinely interested in the other words on the page, he may be called a lexplorer."

Daniel J. Scheub, of Dixon, Illinois, suggested rubricnecker. David Terrell, of St. Louis, submitted addictionado, on behalf of the tenth-grade English class he teaches. Sara Stadler Nelson, of Atlanta, wrote, "My mother grew up in a tiny town in central Nebraska, and she entertained herself with the dictionary in precisely this way. She went on to earn a perfect score on the Test of Standard Written English. She was, of course, an autodidict."

Josh Simons, of Sharon, Massachusetts, suggested, "Perhaps this is an example of double-entry lookkeeping." That's cute. But the term that Steven Clemens, of Maplewood, Missouri, came up with is even cuter (and don't forget that we wanted a word for the person, not the activity): double-entry bookpeeker. Clemens takes top honors.

The other fugitive sought in October was a term for saying in an e-mail that a document or file is attached and then sending the message before remembering to attach the file. A number of readers who submitted responses by e-mail amused themselves by including a line like "For explanation, see attached document" but not attaching anything. Ha-ha!

Sends of omission and e-mnesia were popular suggestions. Richard Siegelman, of Plainview, New York, coined absentee-mail; Teri Viray, of San Diego, nonsendquitur; and Barbara Olsen, of Poughkeepsie, New York, deficit sending.

Carissa Wodehouse, of Portland, Oregon, came up with sentropy. She explained, "The definition of entropy in chemistry is the amount of thermal energy not available to do work, but dictionaries also give the meaning 'a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.'" W. Sean McLaughlin, of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote, "I was immediately inspired by the arcane grammatical term asyndeton [defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as 'the omission of conjunctions from constructions in which they would normally be used'] and thought minor modifications might yield the right meaning: a-senditon. An alternative derives from the medical community. If ataxia describes a lack of muscular coordination, perhaps lack of attaching a file might be called attachia."

Erik Bleich, of Middlebury, Vermont, was one of many people to suggest forgetfileness. He takes top honors for the word together with his explanation and a bonus word he supplied. Bleich wrote, "In all my years of using e-mail, I never once failed to attach a promised document. I prided myself on this point. Then I read your column. The very next day, I suffered my first case of forgetfileness. At least now I have a memorable term for when I forget." And his postscript: "If the oversight is of little consequence, it is mere forgetfileness. If it has serious repercussions, it is best called a docudrama."

Now Brendan J. O'Byrne, of Regina, Saskatchewan, writes, "The Irish term is witches' knickers. But on this side of the Atlantic we don't seem to have a name for the pollution of white disposable plastic bags caught in trees, flapping in the wind."

And Judith Kelman, of New York City, writes, "How about a word for that dicey moment when you should introduce two people but can't remember one of their names?"

Send words that meet Brendan O'Byrne's or Judith Kelman's needs to Word Fugitives, The Atlantic Monthly, 77 North Washington Street, Boston, MA 02114, or visit the Word Fugitives page on our Web site, at www.theatlantic.com/fugitives. Submissions must be received by March 31. Use the same addresses to submit word fugitives that you'd like The Atlantic's help in finding. Letters become the property of Word Fugitives and may be edited.

Readers whose queries are published and those whose words are singled out for top honors will each receive, with our thanks, a selection of recent autographed books by Atlantic authors. The next installment's correspondents will be sent Angry Wind, by Jeffrey Tayler; Road Work, by Mark Bowden; and Privilege, by Ross Douthat.