There are 171,476 words in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, from common—the definition of "set" runs 22 closely-packed pages—to pleasantly obscure: "aglet," for instance, the hard tube at the tip of a shoelace.
Quite a lot, really. But not enough to cover the range and complexity of human experience, judging from other languages, which have words for concepts that we can't express in a single term. The Japanese word mibojin comes to mind: it means "widow," though its literal translation is "not-yet-dead person" with all the obvious implications of superfluousness: a woman without a husband is just sitting around waiting to die.
Perhaps another language can serve up the elusive word to describe how I'm feeling toward Donald Trump. Readers certainly offer their opinions:
"Why the hate for TRUMP every single day" writes J.T. Kozlov, forgetting his interrogative punctuation.
"Your level of anger and hate is debilitating," Stephen Hardy writes.
"All you do is write about how you hate Trump," writes Ron Olovich.
I could give 100 more examples, but you get the idea. And I'm sure many people no doubt do hate him. But I don't hate Donald Trump, never have. I don't even blame him for our current sad national state. If we elected a dog as our president, would you blame the dog? I wouldn't.
I know why they suggest hatred—they have plenty. Hate makes sense to them. Projecting hate upon the president's critics meshes with their frothing, head-exploding "libtard" reaction they like to imagine is provoked by Trump's unending vandalism against our country, its laws, traditions and values.
Back in the non-fantasy world, all the libs I know are in full if grim possession of their unexploded heads, though of course giving those heads frequent sad shakes of amazement.
"Amazed" is closer to the mark, but not quite right. "Shocked"? Not anymore.
What's the right word?
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