I’m a bit of a word junky. I love to discover new words or meanings for words I didn’t know or even new meanings for words I do know. A good source for new meanings is the Urban Dictionary. My husband Harold found this site when he was trying to prove to me that some word he made up was actually a word (I lost the argument). I used it recently to figure out what crunchiest means in “He was clocked doing 100 miles an hour in the crunchiest of cars” where the car in question was a Toyota Prius. Here’s the definition:
CRUNCHY. Adjective. Used to describe persons who have adjusted or altered their lifestyle for environmental reasons.
For the same reasons I also like to read poetry, especially where the familiar meanings of words are turned on their head. I have a collection of poems that I use to find titles for my broadsides. One line I recently used for a title is A Madness Well Restrained, from At the Mermaid Cafeteria by Christopher Morley (d. 1957). The poem refers to the art and passion that go into the making of a poem. But of course it extends to the making of anything one is passionate about, as in my case, wood type collages with numerals.
TRUTH is enough for prose:
Calmly it goes
To tell just what it knows.For verse, skill will suffice–
Delicate, nice
Casting of verbal dice.Poetry, men attain
By subtler pain
More flagrant in the brain–An honesty unfeigned,
A heart unchained,
A madness well restrained.