When Words Fail : In Search of <i> le Mot Juste</i>

All of us have had the experience of not being able to think of a word we know, or think we know.

Usually it is a word that precisely describes an idea we have in mind, and not being able to think of it drives us crazy.

It is my belief that there is a word in English for almost every human condition or experience, and for every object or concept, and if there isn’t, there soon will be.

Some of those words that elude us are exquisitely apt and descriptive; sometimes they express complex contingencies in--what else?--a word.

Take serendipity .

It is a lovely word, felicitous of sound, tripping off the tongue; it reminds me of water splashing in a fountain. And its meaning is a felicitous experience.

Serendipity is not easy to define. Even the dictionary does not seem to get it quite right. Webster’s New World Dictionary says, “an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally.”

To my mind, that doesn’t quite do it.

Serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole in about 1754 to describe the good fortunes of the three princes of Serendip (Ceylon), who set out on adventures in search of one thing, only to find something else quite different and altogether more desirable.

So to me the word means not only finding fortune accidentally, but as a result of one’s searching for something else. It has in it the sense of “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Have you ever wanted to say that something was serendipitous, but couldn’t think of it?

I have a book called The Reverse Dictionary, by Theodore M. Bernstein, which is supposed to solve that problem. If you can’t think of a particular word, you look up its meaning , and presto! there it is.

But it isn’t easy to think of the same definition Bernstein thinks of. Happily, I guessed right on serendipity and found it. I had an idea it would have something to do with luck, so I looked under luck , then lucky , and there it was--lucky discoveries made accidentally: SERENDIPITY.

But I haven’t had much luck finding other words in The Reverse Dictionary. It’s a question of trying to guess how Bernstein would define the word you’re looking for.

I did find another lovely word, nostalgia , by looking under longing. Webster’s defines nostalgia as “a longing to go back to one’s home, home town or homeland; a longing for something far away, or long ago, or for some former happy circumstances.”

I looked in Bernstein’s dictionary under longing , and there it was--longing for something distant in time or place: NOSTALGIA.

But it isn’t always that easy. I am stumped by a request from Marcia M. Burkart for a particular word that “describes a phenomenon so succinctly that it must exist.”

Mrs. Burkart says she read the word years ago but neglected to write it down and has forgotten it, along with the name of the book she read it in. “I have asked everyone I know who loves words, but, alas, the word remains elusive. . . .”

Here is the experience the word describes:

“Shortly after learning about a new person, place or idea, seeing the name of that person, place or idea everywhere. The name jumps out at you from magazines, books and newspapers, and you think, how could I have been so unaware of this before?

“Imagine having someone tell you that shortly after doing original research on a rare and primitive tribe in New Guinea, he overheard two men at a party talking about the tribe and then discovered that People magazine was doing an article on the same subject. . . .”

I’m sure we’ve all had a similar experience. It is especially common today because of our rapid communications. A person you have never heard of one day is a celebrity the next, and his name pops up everywhere. You see or hear a word for the first time, and soon it is bouncing back at you from all the media, and from all your friends.

I remember being asked by a visiting British journalist a year or two ago what the word yuppie meant, and telling him I had never heard of it. I must have encountered yuppie a dozen times in the following week.

I had never heard of Vanna White until I read an article about her and television game shows recently in Newsweek magazine. Now I can’t get away from the woman. She is almost as ubiquitous as Twiggy used to be, or Bo Belinsky, or Geraldine Ferraro, or the late Andy Warhol.

Or you buy a magenta suede jacket--very daring--and the next time you go to a cocktail party you see six men wearing the identical model.

If there is a word for that experience, how would you describe it? I might suggest, “the sudden proliferation of a supposedly novel or unique phenomenon.” Or, “the discovery that something one did not know of before is commonplace.”

Alas, Bernstein does not define the word that way. And if indeed it exists in his dictionary, I can’t find it.

I’ll bet you this, though.

In a few days the word will begin turning up everywhere.