Fun with Synonyms!

 I haven't posted in a while, it's true. A lot of the stuff I originally published here was written during bouts of depression, and it shows. The posts were tense, agitated, terribly confused. Reading over some of them, I can see myself fumbling about in the dark, kicking against anything in hopes of determining my whereabouts. It didn't reflect the real me. Since maybe May, I've been meaning to delete this and start another blog -- a blog that doesn't reveal such a rough patch in my history -- for a long while now, but... something held me back. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's that inner writer's voice that urges me to never delete anything I've written no matter how crappy said writing is, maybe I simply feel a sense of attachment to that girl who was once a frail and broken me... In any case, here I am once again in my corner of randomness. Expect to see more posts from me on a regular basis. Or don't. I suppose it doesn't matter either way.

But to get to the post. "Fun" is most likely false advertising here. But maybe you'll find my challenge fun regardless...? Anyway, I've been having some trouble figuring out a viable synonym and Bro. Google's giving me a headache. Maybe someone with an extensive vocabulary and a dislike of the utter the blandness of political correction will come along and help out..

My word is: badass. Don't laugh. The word has become ingrained in my vocabulary, to the point that I increasingly have to derail my train of thought in the middle of a sentence to avoid splattering the hillsides with some sensitive person. And while it's arguably quite kind of me to show this consideration, the end result is that my train still ends up lying in a smoking heap of foolishness while the person on the tracks points and laughs at my utterly failed sense of direction. It's embarrassing. I so dreadfully dislike derailment. (Hurrah for alliterations! :D)

The problem is that I can't find a worthy substitute. Imagine if there was controversy around the word "ecstatic". Would "pleased" or "excited" do as a substitute? Of course not! I have found no equivalent words for the noun form (with the exception of a certain word involving someone's mom, which I do not feel compelled at all to use). As an adjective, "indomitable" seems to be a close substitute, but it seems pretentious in actual conversation and I'm afraid I might not be pronouncing it correctly. "Bodacious" might also work, but it seems a bit silly in context, and "audacious" is overused. "Intrepid" is another commonly cited adjective, but I'm not sure it carries the same weight. "Insurmountable" does carry a similar weight, but it has different implications.

My most common recovery words include "brilliant" and "awesome", but the overuse has killed any weight they once had. I've considered bringing "frigid" back with some slight alterations. [More specifically, just the other day I mused about the correctness of both the terms "refrigerator" and "frigerator" (the difference being one cools and the other cools again), and the waste of breath it takes to say "I refrigerated it". I thought it would be much more convenient and practical to use "fridge" itself as a verb, as in "I fridged it." That got me thinking about the potential a verb like "fridge" could hold. It's short, concise, rejected by spellcheck when written the past term (and thus "cutting-edge"), solid yet question-provoking, and it bears resemblance to f-substitutes. (And we all know that faux curse words are hilarious.) The pronunciation of "fridged" also strongly resembles that of a quickly spoken "frigid", making it something of a portmanteau of the two words. I'm intrigued by it.] Essentially, both "fridged" and "frigid" as an adjective would refer to something so incredibly cool (pun intended) that you can only appreciate the extent of its awesomeness after the fact. (This definition, of course, draws from the usage of "fridge" in the names of the phenomena "fridge logic" and "fridge brilliance", in which you notice the plot holes or plot genius, respectively, of a movie only after it's over and you've headed to the fridge.) "Fridge" as a noun, therefore, might refer to a person who invokes this reaction -- making a "fridge" essentially a badass. But naming people after kitchen appliances doesn't exactly invoke a sense of awesomeness. So maybe "fridge" refers to the phenomenon itself, and the person who invokes this feeling is instead a "fridger". However, in this case the word seems to resemble certain other words too closely. 'Fridgator", a portmanteau of "fridge" and "matador", could be a viable alternative... but I find the word begins to border the ridiculousness of forced slang at this point. *sigh*

Maybe I should start outsourcing to other languages? Surely one culture out there has a non-offensive term of respect for an incredibly skilled and talented someone? An honorific, maybe? Internet slang? ("Leet"? "Beast"? "The bomb"? Ugh...)

Gah. I sincerely hope my stupid ruminating obsession with words will be alleviated/useful when I start studying linguistics next year...