Word of the Day: Florid

I just learned a new word, and it's fabulous. No, the word itself isn't "fabulous." It's "florid." It sounds bad, doesn't it? Like "horrid" or "torrid." But it isn't, it's very good:

flor·id (flôr'id, flor'-) (adj.)

1. Flushed with rosy color; ruddy.
2. Very ornate; flowery: a florid prose style.
3. Healthy. (archaic)
4. Abounding in or covered with flowers. (obsolete)

[French floride, from Latin floridus, from flos, flor-, flower.]

n. - floridity flo·rid'i·ty (fl?-rid'i-te, flô-) or flor'id·ness
adv. - floridly flor'id·ly

So I'm going to start using it as often as possible. I thought about making a new blog for it (another one? already? but wouldn't it be full of pretty things!), but a silly boy already wasted the name with a blog that sparked once and died four years ago. Humph.

Florid would be a great name for a little shop, too, and not just a florist, but one that sold 1000-thread-count pink pajamas and ridiculously expensive candles and delicious hand creams. I'd like it on a T-shirt: be florid. That would send a lot of people Googling on their crackberries, for sure.

It would make a great color name, too, since I'm in love with color names. It could be the color of pretty red nail polish from OPI, or a preppy beet-colored cardigan from J.Crew, or a cute rosy-red T-shirt from J.Jill. It also sounds like a great way to describe the color of a juicy red spinel, ruby, or rubellite. Sigh.

Florid could be the color of your lips after you eat a cherry popsicle, or the color they are after you've tried on seven shades of lipstick at the Clinique counter. It could describe a sunburn on your nose after driving around in a convertible all day.

But there's not just florid, the color, there's florid, the style. Like the ornate iron gates guarding homes in Charleston and New Orleans, the decadent jewelry of Penny Preville, or the lacy curtains in my bedroom.



Plus there are the noun versions, floridity and floridness, and since this word is nearly obsolete, I'm going to take it upon myself to make my own definitions of them. Floridity, for example, could be what you show when you're being particularly sassy. Her floridness is what you love about your craziest friend from college.

And then the adverb, floridly. A girl could flip her hair floridly--that sounds right, doesn't it? Even if it isn't. Or kiss floridly or walk floridly or even laugh floridly. I think I'd like to do all of those things.

I like peppering it into literature, too. One could go floridly amid the noise and haste. In fact, that's very good advice. Baudelaire could "be florid" instead of drunk, though a florid wine would be a good thing, too. How about, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a florid wife." Ha!

What a fabulous word, florid.

First First: I Hereby Blog

It's hard to start a blog. It's different than when you start writing in a blank book, where you can always turn in a few pages and start on, say, page 3 or 4, so that whatever you put there doesn't seem like it's so important, on the front page and all...and if you ever have a need to "start" that book differently, or find something that should be first, you have those few pages at the front to leapfrog before what you've already written first and write something first-first.

But on a blog, you can't do that. Even if you decide to go back later and add an entry before the "first" first entry, everyone knows and the chronological (chronoblogical? blogological?) order gets messed up and the page gets all wonky... No, you can't do that in a blog. In a blog, the start is the start and everyone saw it so that's all there is to it. So let's get started.

Partly because I'm a recently downsized, returning-to-freelancing writer who needs to, well, write, on a regular basis, and partly because Brother makes fun of me for updating my Facebook profile too often (I'm a writer, there's pressure to have a cool profile!), and partly because I'm newly addicted (nay, obsessed?) to wheat toast and strawberry jam and feel the need to confess it publicly (my name is Tammy and...), and partly because all the cool kids are doing it... I hereby blog.

As for the toast addiction... *reclining on couch* I'm fairly sure it all started when my sweet friend read me the accidentally brave adventures of Mercy Watson, an adorable pig who loves "hot buttered toast," preferably in very large stacks.

It was only a few days later that I first ordered (innocently, absentmindedly) wheat toast at the Double T Diner while visiting Brother in Merry-land. It was the best toast EVER, and it's all crumbs from there.

(By the way, I've already found camaraderie for my lil toast problem in a fellow blogger. Molly Wizenberg, foodie-blogger extraordinaire (of Orangette fame) turned foodie-author, gave me relief when she confessed her own version of what I will no longer call a rut: "I think my problem is peanut butter. I lose all motivation when there is a jar of peanut butter around. Given an adequate supply of sandwich bread, I will eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches indefinitely, to the near-complete exclusion of other foods.")