LEND ME YOUR EAR: BETTER `HICKELIZED' THAN `MENTALLY MASSIFIED'

Sometimes an unfamiliar word strikes me as laughable, other times I want to cry. Especially if I discover the word that seems so unlikely actually exists.

"Transhumance", used in connection with moving livestock from one location to another as seasons change, filled me with mixed emotions. My guess was that some environmental extremist had coined it in the hope of humanizing animals in the hearts of herders and turning the herders into vegetarians. On consulting American Heritage, however, I learned "transhumance" derives from humus, meaning ground or soil. Why couldn't I have thought of humus?

In a story in The New Yorker, I read that one of the characters, during her stay in a hospital, was concussed by a visitor she didn't want to see. I couldn't believe "concussion" had been reduced to a verb by dictionary panelists, but American Heritage proved me wrong again. To me, concuss seems only another cussed effort to be trendy, and I herewith dismiss it without my blessing.

Recently, a headline in a news article informed readers that newspapers are now being "pasturized." We think of milk as pasteurized, but newspapers? Reading on, I found that "pasturizing" newspapers means recycling them for bedding for farm animals, so I couldn't even fault the spelling.

Of the ize words I've met up with these past weeks, "hickelized" is the least likely. During a panel discussion about drug czar Robert Martinez and his efforts to stamp out drug use, a participant asked, "Do you think Martinez has been hickelized by his position?" Don't assume I heard wrong. Another panelist replied, "No, I don't think he's been hickelized."

Could their pronunciation have been regional? Even as far north as Southeast Missouri, we often hear tin for ten. And to "heckle" means to badger or viciously annoy. However annoying to the ear, "heckelize" seems more applicable than the idea of turning Robert Martinez into a hick!

On a TV group discussion about the Brady Bill, one member offered: "I would conject that the Brady Bill will pass." Conject? Whether this abbreviation qualifies as funny ha-ha or funny peculiar is beyond my conjecturing, but may the term never achieve dictionary status.

Another participant on the same program called the bill "equally violative." Perhaps the speaker was trying to say it violates the Constitution. Then again, he may have meant it was capable of triggering violence. Or was he thinking of "volatile"? Only the Lord and the speaker know for sure, and neither can be called to account.

During a talk show devoted to family conflicts, Sonya Friedman spoke of "highly-conflicted families." Conflicted as an adjective or a verb is almost more than I can swallow, though it's my ear that really suffers.

The use of vogue as a verb hurts my spine at least as applied by a well-known Time magazine critic in his review of Paris is Burning: "... they (the characters) vogue around on the floor like Madonna dancers." Dancing, it seems, formerly considered an art, may now refer to anything from fleeing after a robbery to flying over the cuckoo's nest. Still, fashion models slow-dance and vogue at the same time all through their shows. Deliver us from this counterculture!

In the May issue of Vanity Fair, an illuminating "Letter to Lhasa" by a writer who spent some time in Tibet several years ago demonstrates that Tibet is still controlled by China. Holiday Inn managers, we read, are still "non-individuated", and the young ladies, hired for whatever, are "programmed porcelain mentally-massified dolls." Tibetans, however, according to the author, are "hoping that the next century will be better."

At this writing, the whole world is hoping the next century will be better. Meanwhile, we citizens of the United States of America would much rather be "hickelized" than "non-individuated" or "mentally massified."