Perfectly oblivious

My father loved Bowery Boys movies, and so do I. I try to catch them on TCM whenever I can, and most recently watched Loose in London (1953). As a kid I loved the character Sach (Huntz Hall), the funniest member of the gang, but as an adult I have come to better appreciate Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey), the pint-sized leader who, in trying to prove he's smarter than everyone else, misuses language in delightful ways.

In Loose in London, Satch learns he may be heir to an English fortune, and the Boys (Gorcey was born in 1917, so you can see how much of a boy he was by 1953) travel to London to discover what he may inherit. 

There are no laugh tracks in movies to tell you what's supposed to be funny, thank goodness, so some of Slip's slips can slip past you before you can catch them, but here are a few that I caught:

"Gullible's Travels"

"no time for sediment"

"It's perfectly oblivious what happened."

"oxygenarian"

"British Umpire"

"one of England's most famous earmarks"

"halls of ivory"

"filament of your imagination"

All this was just for laughs, of course, but many of us have used words we don't fully understand in order to make a good impression. And then it backfires on us, just as it does with Slip Mahoney.

In 1979 Peter Bowler published a book ostensibly (should I look that up?) designed to aid people who want to sound smart without looking stupid. It's called The Superior Person's Book of Words and has been reprinted several times. Here we find choice words such as temulency (drunkenness), sciolism (superficial knowledge), formicate (to swarm) and tremellose (shaking like jelly).

Some words, formicate for instance, might be fun to use because others may think they mean something else. (Try telling someone, "Students are formicating in the hall," and see what happens.) Turdiform actually means shaped like a thrush. Stupefying may sound like a compliment, but it actually means "inducing stupor." Lucifugous may suggest Lucifer, but it means "avoiding daylight."

The wisest of us will, in most cases, use words we know our audience will understand, because both speech and writing are all about communication, not confusion. The worst case is to use words our audience understands but we don't.

Maybe I should have looked up ostensibly? I should have said supposedly.