Don’t you love it when you find a new word? One that immediately strikes your imagination? You just want to wrap it around yourself and snuggle down with a cup of coffee.
I heard the greatest one the other day: resistentialism. [re-zis-'ten-chê-li-zêm] (For those who don’t often play dictionary, it’s the TEN syllable that is emphasized). It’s the belief that inanimate objects are out to get us. It was coined by humorist Paul Jennings in an article in The Spectator in 1948 called “Report on Resistentialism”.
I know we’ve all experienced the software that messes up every single time except when the tech support guy’s there. The printer that works all day, then jams when you have one last report to print before you can go home. The credit card machine that breaks down two days before Christmas (happened to us this year). Your POS system crashes on Harry Potter night (I believe it was the Goblet of Fire when that one happened.) Suddenly the “S” key won’t work on your keyboard when you need to create a gift card for Sam Simmons (yep… that was last month as well).
And this is one of those words that you hear so much while it pings around in your head… res + resist +existentialism. So fantastic.
And the final treat… I was vividly thrown back to sophomore year in college, 20th century Russian prose survey class, and reading Olesha’s Envy. (Attention, publishing world: HOW is this novel currently out of print in English? OUTRAGE!)
I am waiting with excitement for the first time I hear resistentialism in conversation. Please, world, use it often, if only to make me smile.
Presumably, since this word came from a humorist, there’s a connotation here that objects really aren’t out to get us even though some people think they are. And how can we know for sure anyway, especially when there’s just been a long string of very odd events that appear uncomfortably synchronistic. There should be a lot of applications for this word in the sports world where people are naturally superstitious about everything.
Malcolm
Okay, first, fun word. I’ll try to use it. Right now the closest I can think of is “I just had the most resistential day”. My spell checker doesn’t like that very much. And it’s probably not proper use anyway. But now that it is in my head I’m afraid it’s stuck there for the next time I have a bad day in the lab. How many of my friends do I have to convince to use it before it’s allowed in to a dictionary?
Second, I’ll guess that your “POS system” is a Point Of Sale system? I read it as something else first.