Wednesday 11 December 2013

Be It Ever So 'Umble.

Good morning! Or if your name is Paul Forster seasonsfullcircle.blogspot.com and you live in New Zealand, good evening. If your name is not Paul but you live in New Zealand, good evening to you too. In fact, let's not mess about here, salutations to you wherever you are and whatever the time is.

Thanks for stopping by my humble blog. I say humble but I don't know why. The very fact I'm writing it at all makes me think it can't be that humble. Humble.adj having or showing a modest or low opinion of your own importance. Do humble people write blogs about their everyday lives? Is it a good thing to be humble? I don't know. The Dalai Llama he's a humble bloke, wouldn't you say? Lots of people love and admire him. And Gandi? Well how humble do you want to be? All in all I think humble is probably okay. Except if your name is Uriah Heap the Dicken's character. He is obsequestiusly humble. Obsequesiously. Obsiquiciously. Obsequisciously. He is so smarmy. Do you see what I did there? I left my spelling mistakes in. This is to show you what a truly humble person I am.

The fact that I really do not know how to spell obsequesciously is actually unimportant in the scheme of things. It is not a word I use every day. I am going to make a startling admission here, I didn't use the word obsequiciosly once in the past twelve months! Yes I know, shocking ain't it! But it is true I assure you. I have wracked my brain cell in an effort to verify this fact.

At this point I would like you to take part in my spelling test. This is how it works. You have one chance to spell the word obsequiciously correctly. No cheating now. Do not look it up until you have tried.. Let me know how you get on. If you didn't manage it and admit it then you are a humble person. If you did get it right, well I'm saying nothing okay. Oh! Except congratulations on being a good speller.

I have my dictionary to hand (it isn't my dictionary. I borrowed it from Tricia several years ago and have now claimed it for my own) and I am going to look up the correct spelling of obsequesiously right now. Excuse me a moment or two.

Well that is a shock I can tell you. I think the reason why I couldn't get it right even after so many tries is that I have been mispronouncing it. You know what this means. It means that all my life I have been saying a word that doesn't even exist! How excruciatingly embarrassing! Not really. Me? Embarrassed? I am far too humble. Anyway as I said just now, it's not a word I use often.

This has been one of those posts where I sit down not knowing what to write about. Had you noticed?



6 comments:

  1. OK... you have officially made me laugh out loud. I was studying your first use of obsekweee.... that word.... because I thought you spelled it wrong and then read on and, well. We don't use smarmy here, but fawning is easy to spell, although a shade different in meaning. Hey. I think it's just past lunch time for you. Hope you had a yummy one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jeez, John, did you swallow the dictionary? Not only were you content to brag about the use of the word obsequiously but then you follow up with excruciatingly embarrassing. I feel quite worn out...... lol.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I find a big word creeping out of my mouth every now and again. At times like those I feel rather arrogant but what can one do? My mother insisted that I use proper grammar at all times. For some reason she was not as strict about my siblings language skills. I have fallen into a lazy use of English and often it is incorrect. I thank my mother immensely for making me learn to speak correctly but perhaps the way I speak now is my rebellion. What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  4. If I worried about my lack of grammar I might go mad. I bet you speak beautifully.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I always enjoy these posts the best....when you sit down and don't know what to write about....I always end up learning something from Humble John.....thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. And that's why spell check is on computers to help with spelling errors, John.

    ReplyDelete