A fine festuche

[susandennis]

Years ago, I was a communications manager for IBM. There was one of us at every plant and every division hq making about 50 of us total around the United States. We were a kind of club. One member of the club had this theory about word usage. He allowed as how if you made up a good enough word and got three people to use it, within a year it

Comments

[waning_estrogen]

that is a great word. I like it.
And just looking at estis' s comment up there, it looks like what he's found is a language variant of festucca, which is where fescue came from, which is a grass, and the fact that it is used here extensively as "f. something else" lends credence to my theory as that's how the Latin names are noted.

but yeah. nice word. I didn't mean to make a big festuche about it.

[susandennis]

Ha! You crack me up!

[greyandred]

This is brilliant! I had to read the whole thing out loud to Joe. Don't you just love this sort of thing?

[susandennis]

I totally do. The English language is missing a lot of really needed words but I rarely have come across one as useful as this one. I didn't even like the guy who started it - he was a jerk, but he made a great word.

[anonymous]

"Festuche" on the Loose

Just wanted the originators of the word "festuche" know that it's gaining popularity! I'm a public reference librarian in Massachusetts, and we just received a question on the origin of the word. The patron was using it in the same sense as you described. We happily referred them to your note about its creation. It's a great word--I may start using it myself!

Festuche

[anonymous]

Too Funny! I work at IBM in White Plains and someone just used Festuche in the hall way. There was some discussion as to whether it is a real word. Upon Googling "Festuche" I was directed to your website where I see many references to IBM. Are you still affiliated (i.e. Susan Dennis/Somers/IBM ?. Whwright@us.ibm.com

[anonymous]

I actually thought it was a word - not an IBMism - imagine my surprise