The Words We Know

A wayback machine journal entry from 9/29/04 reminding me of the dull aching grind of mothering small kids

One of the words we had in our family was “puny.” My mother used it when we were sick.

“Are you feeling puny?” she would ask us, feeling our forehead. Or, “Be kind to your sister today; she’s got the punies.”

My husband, who loves new words and loves to use them not quite correctly on purpose, tried to co-opt puny. He was using it every time our daughter squawked and it started to annoy me.

“You are denigrating the word puny,” I told him sternly. “You’re going to obliterate it through misuse!”

He was banned from puny and all of its off-spring.

But today my daughter really is feeling puny, which is a word that is a specific kind of sick. It means weighty and aching, t