For example, the other day I was driving down the road and got stuck behind someone going a good 15 mph below the speed limit. I couldn't go around the car because I needed to stay in the right lane so that I could make a right turn into a parking lot. The car in front of me was already going slow--in and of itself a frustrating experience--but as we got closer to where I needed to turn, the car in front of me kept going slower and slower and slower... until I shouted, "Enough of this ridiculosity!" Yes, road rage gets the best of us. Not only did I shout in my car at the driver in front of me, but I also experienced a momentary lexical gap in my vocabulary.
After my outburst, I started a conversation with myself (I was alone in the car) that went something like this:
Hmm... Ridiculosity doesn't sound like a real word. But what is the noun form of ridiculous? I'm fairly sure we have one because we'd need a noun to describe a ridiculous situation without using complex phrases full of modifiers when one word could sum it all up. The go-to suffix for making nouns tends to be -ness, so is ridiculousness the word I'm looking for? Well, that just sounds ridiculous. There's far too many s sounds in a row for that to be a good word. Ridiculousness... ridiculosity. I like ridiculosity better, but something is telling me ridiculousness is actually the word.When I got home, I went to my handy Mac dictionary, and--sure enough--ridiculousness is, in fact, the noun form of the adjective ridiculous. However, I think we should start a campaign that any adjective ending in -ous should form its noun counterpart by using the -ity suffix (thus changing the -ous to simply -os when spelling out the whole word). Words like ridiculousness, incredulousness, and marvelousness just sound wrong. Don't ridiculosity, incredulosity, and marvelosity just sound better?
so agreed with you. i'm trying to write an essay and i wrote down ridiculosity, but it was underlined red haha
ReplyDeleteSpell check needs to catch up with the times! It's been telling me for nearly 7 years now that 'quotative' isn't a word... If I knew who to write to in order to fix these oversights (including 'ridiculosity' and other such fun nouns), I would be sending letters daily. :)
ReplyDeleteI actually think "ridiculousness" does sound better, sorry to say =)
ReplyDeleteBut I get your point though, it sounds a bit strange, but people will get what you mean when you say it, and it makes sense, so i like it :)
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ReplyDelete