Miss Wainwright was speechless,
embarrassment ceaseless,
little Johnny had found the lass lacking.
She isn't omniscient,
her vocab's deficient,
and young Wendy was almost sent packing.
For John had a book which
helped make him quite word-rich,
now his language is vast and impressive.
This young upstart creature
had challenged the teacher
in a fashion that was quite aggressive.
Said Johnny to Wendy,
"Since teacher's so trendy,
she'll know ev'ry single word I do."
Though it's wrong to tempt fate
Wendy snapped up the bait,
never knowing quite what she'd got into.
Johnny laid the word down,
Wendy started to frown—
her confusion soon made the class goggle:
"A switch has a toggle,
each boy scout a woggle...
what the Dickens 'n all's a spike-boggle?"
And today in that school
there is one golden rule,
and to break it can just make the flesh crawl:
if a child wants to test,
best you give it a rest—
for it might be the cause of your downfall!
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Author Notes
Today's word:
spike-boggle (v.) to sabotage, ruin, or render ineffective.
A term first used during WWI to describe the practice of destroying enemy aircraft or equipment.
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
Thanks for reading.
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