As you ALL no doubt recall (since all of you have good memories), I had a peculiar nagging feeling I had forgotten something important yesterday. Rather than spend time trying to figure out what it was, I spent time trying to come up with a word to describe the feeling.
Which I think turned out quite nicely--lethealgia is a neologism I coined, derived from the Greek Lethe, the River of Oblivion in Hades, which is sometimes used to indicate forgetfulness, and algia from the Greek word algos, pain. (And not to be confused with algore, a painfully dull human simulacrum.) Therefore (at least according to me) we now have lethealgia, the unpleasant feeling associated with having forgotten something.
The only cure for lethealgia?
Remembering either what it was you had forgotten, or figuring out you hadn't actually forgotten anything in the first place.
In my case, I DID forget something yesterday. It was Mailout Thursday, and I usually also send out an e-mail version of the same stuff I put in the mailbox to a smaller list of people. And I forgot all about it until THIS MORNING.
The relief from that feeling is hard to describe, but it is a relief. And now, I go to do my forgotten task.
UPDATE: 11:32 a.m. I HAVE HIT A HOMER, BABY! So self-satisfied was I in my too-clever-by-halfness, I thought I would send along my invention to Astoria, New York's own Grant Barrett, editor of the always entertaining Double-Tongued Word Wrester.
Well, it's your lucky day. I usually don't record nonce submissions like this for fear of being deluged with words that will never last, but I like this one. So I've recorded it as a cite:
http://www.dtww.org/index.php/citations/lethealgia_1/
Thanks!
Grant Barrett
Happiness all around! And, obviously, thanks greatly to Mr. Barrett.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 5, 2006 09:52 AMYou know, I LIKE that term, lethealgia. I think I'll use it too!
Posted by: Stan at May 5, 2006 10:08 AMI just wish I could figure out a way to make money off of it.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 5, 2006 10:21 AMDo you suppose it means anything that nobody noticed that you hadn't sent it out?
Posted by: Skinnydan at May 5, 2006 11:14 AMNah--they wouldn't miss it one way or the other. It's like junk mail, but I do it because either our mailroom or the USPS had a spate a year ago of NOT getting our regular snailmail delivery to people on time, so we do this as a belt-and-suspenders type operation.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 5, 2006 11:30 AMJeepers creepers! I now expect this new word to be in the Oxford English Dictionary within a few years. Imagine--Possumblog being one of the shapers of the English language. You must be so proud.
Posted by: Stan at May 5, 2006 11:48 AMActually, I am. It really is sorta cool to think that I might have actually written something useful.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 5, 2006 11:55 AM