There should be a word for that

Bill Kurtis introduces two new words to our vocabulary.

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I’m Bill Kurtis. We’re playing this week with Alexandra Petri, Roy Blunt Jr. and Tom Bodett. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: In just a minute, Bill puts the rhyme in the coconut. It’s the Listener Limerick Challenge. If you’d like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAITWAIT. That’s 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week’s news. But first we’re going to try a new game that we’re calling…

KURTIS: There Should Be A Word For That.

SAGAL: English has always seemed like an adequate language. When we run out of words, we just grunt and point to where the food goes.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: But it turns out other languages have some really useful words that we didn’t know we needed. We’re going to ask you about foreign words we really should have here but don’t. Get it right and you get a point. Tom, you’re up first. Your word comes from Scotland. Which of these two is something that will be understood in Edinburgh?

KURTIS: Betwiddled, the phenomenon of being unable to look anywhere but at the thing you shouldn’t be looking at, as in I was completely betwiddled by his open fly for a good 90 seconds.

SAGAL: Or…

KURTIS: Tartle, the horror you feel when you’re introducing someone and you’ve realized you’ve forgotten their name.

TOM BODETT: I love that concept, so I’m going to say tartle.

SAGAL: You’re right.

BODETT: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: That’s the word.

BODETT: Yes. It needs a word.

SAGAL: It does need a word. It’s happened to all of us.

BODETT: Yes. Tartle. I’m going to write that down before I forget that, too.

SAGAL: Alexandra, next one is for you. It’s a Finnish word. Kalsarikannit. Kalsarikannit. And it’s a very specific word. What does it mean? Does it mean…

KURTIS: The act of planning your outfit to match the stains from the meal you’re planning to eat?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Or…

KURTIS: The act of staying home and getting drunk in your underwear?

(LAUGHTER)

ALEXANDRA PETRI: Ooh, both of those sound like a recipe for a good evening.

(LAUGHTER)

PETRI: I think I’m going to go with the second one.

SAGAL: You’re right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

PETRI: What?

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Is it wonderful that they have a word for it or terrifying that they do it so much they needed a word to describe it? I mean, it’s like, oh, my God, we spent so much time explaining what we did last night. Oh, yes, I just sat at home and got drunk in my underwear. We just need a word to save time.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Well, I think it’s more like, you know, like with the Eskimo and the nine words for snow thing. It’s like, we have a lot of words for snow, too. We have slush. We have flurries. We have — they’re all distinctions. So what it probably came from is sitting home and getting drunk…

SAGAL: Yeah.

BODETT: …Is like a category.

SAGAL: Right.

BODETT: And then they needed some distinctions within there — in your underwear.

SAGAL: Right.

PETRI: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

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• There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you’d really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

Probability or Imperative

A couple of clarifications could help here. When you say there «should» or «ought» to be a word for something, do you mean «there most probably is, or is to be expected» (there should be a cliff on the other side of the road) or «it is an imperative to be so?» (there should be a sign on the wall indicating the rules)

In the first case, I would ask if the feeling indicates you have confidence that there is a word for some thing or concept but you don’t know it. This might be generally described as having an inkling, a hunch, a notion, suspicion, or intimation.

In the second case, you would be asking (or stating/suggesting) that there be a word for something that doesn’t yet have a word representing/defining/describing it, like making a case for an English equivalent of the German schadenfreude, for example.

Intuition vs. Knowing

You indicate this is a feeling which implies an unconscious, spontaneous knowing that could not be reached through normal deductive, inductive, or non-monotonic reasoning heuristics; it’s an intuitive knowing and not one gained from accumulation of knowledge. It is unconscious in that one does not consciously decide to have this feeling and spontaneous in that while it may come as an epiphany, it does not come when called (think about one’s creative muse).

This would contrast with, say, reaching that conclusion (that there ought to be a word for…) from a logical, possibly emperical, bit of reasoning with what you know about words and lexicons and etymology and so on. Then I’d argue it would be less of a feeling and more of a proposition or supposition (that there ought to be a word for…) or even a conjecture or thesis.

Not to be pedantic here, but one can feel that there ought to be…or think/suppose that there ought to be…and that modality of knowing (feeling vs. thinking) can decide which word to use.