hytormum . . .

hytormum, indeed. I have had a love affair with words for years thanks to Miss Moulding, my junior year English teacher. I love the way some words sound . . . how they roll off my tongue. How they convey their message. And some are just plain funky and make me giggle . . . or snort. I am prone to snorting.

Today I ran into hytormum. Great word. Great rhythm. Sounds like something a young British soldier would say, while saluting goodbye to his mother before heading off to war in March of 1942.

Or a rare breed of flower, taller and larger than the norm. Yellow with white tips, plumply growing unheeded in the small yard of a horticulturist in Iowa . . . named after his uncle Hiram.

Perhaps the title on the door of an obscure inner sanctum of the fossil and relic department, on the fourth floor of the Museum of Natural History in NYC, rarely open to the public, but the dusty domain of one bent and gnarled old man who has happily dedicated the last 67 years of his life to the mysteries of the past.

So I looked it up. Non-existent. Mr. Webster wants to know if I meant Tomium? or hummum, hordeum, holmium, hydnum, homam, hydroma, hadoram, or possibly hoodlum? But no hytormum. Hummmm. snort.

So who is it who sits around and makes up the passwords that authenticate your validity to post on someones blog? Because that is where I found hytormum. It may not be a real word but I think I will start slipping it into my vocabulary and see if anyone notices. "The fluctuation in low lying hytormum is causing a drop in temperature. Don't you agree Mrs. Jones?"

I'm just saying . . .