As some of you may know, I am universally acknowledged as having no neck. My head literally sits atop my shoulders.
While it hasn’t bothered me very much, my friend sent me this, from the Word of the Day website, which cheered me up quite a bit.
WORD
argal
MEANING:
conjunction, adverb: Therefore.
ETYMOLOGY:
By alteration of the Latin ergo (therefore). The word argal is usually used to indicate that the reasoning presented is ludicrous.
USAGE:
“Mr. Barbecue-Smith was a short and corpulent man, with a very large head and no neck. In his earlier middle age he had been distressed by this absence of neck, but was comforted by reading in Balzac’s ‘Louis Lambert’ that all the world’s great men have been marked by the same peculiarity, and for a simple and obvious reason: Greatness is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one another; argal…It was convincing.”
Aldous Huxley; Crome Yellow; 1921.
Then again, I am also reminded of a conversation between me and a coworker prior to the birth of my daughter that went like this:
Me: Yeah, Elysha and I are afraid that the baby might have a huge head and no neck, just like its dad. Poor little thing.
Coworker: Don’t be silly. You have a neck.
Me. No, I really don’t. Just this big head stuck on a pair of shoulders.
Coworker: Don’t be ridiculous. Show me your neck.
Me: Huh?
Coworker: C’mon. Show me your neck.
Me: I am showing you my neck. What do you think I am? A turtle?
Coworker: No, I mean, stretch your neck out.
Me: I am stretching my neck out. This is it. It’s all the neck I’ve got!
Coworker: Oh.
