LEND ME YOUR EAR: WORD CARVING: AN ART FORM FOR WINNERS, LOSERS

A funny thing happened to the "i" key on my Smith-Corona recently. The cap disappeared! A column was due at the newspaper office in two days, and I was tempted to submit it with the spaces intact for the missing letter. However, my faithful repairman at Plaza Gifts and Office Supplies managed to lift a matching cap from another machine in record time, so readers were spared the challenge.

Today, a challenge of a different color awaits readers. None of the words under scrutiny can be found in any dictionary. Among them are several that in my view have a slim chance of making the grade, though readers are free to challenge my doubtlessly-prejudiced assessments.

First, consider "occluded." On a TV special of recent vintage, a reporter, informing us of a new disease rampant among a tribe of Indians, announced: "The spread of this disease may be occluded to changes in environment." The disease is now showing up elsewhere, but its origin is no more mysterious than the origin of the term "occluded." Whatever the announcer was thinking of, the word wanted was "attributed" a far cry from "occluded" even in sound.

Next, take "exerously." After Oakland put Chicago to shame some time back, a TV sportscaster confounded viewers with: "Oakland did us exerously in their last game." I'm still wondering what adverb the sportscaster managed to mangle.

In an article on sportscasters' mangled English appearing in the March 20 TV Guide, the legendary Dizzy Dean was given credit for a new past tense of "slide." Announced Dizzy in a tizzy, "He slud home safely." This carving caused the whole world to rock with laughter and to adopt it as their own, though dictionary panelists have thus far ignored it. Too bad!

In an effort to relate to a new business establishment in a nearby town, a radio announcer explained that it was "infiliated with a national chain." Listeners had no problem with "infiliated," but nowhere is anyone permitted to substitute an "in" for an "af."

On a TV documentary covering a major oil spill, I watched the rescue of a bird whose deliverance had come too late. the rescuer pointed out that the bird was "too sick to ruffly its feathers." "Ruffly" proved as painful to me as the failure of the crewman's effort, so I tuned out in sympathy for both of us.

According to a more knowledgeable linguist, "Utopia" has an evil twin "Dystopia." The author, whose name unfortunately eluded my notes, defined "Dystopia" as "an imaginary place depressingly wretched, where people lead a fearful existence." In today's embattled world, countless peoples the world over are living lives equally wretched and fearful, thus rendering the place far from imaginary though appropriately descriptive.

In the June 28 issue of The New Yorker, David Freeman presented readers with "A Screenwriters' Lexicon" composed of expressions used only in conversation "because irony is not always useful in a screenwriter's script." Among the idiocies Freeman listed was "womjep" (also "femjep"), meaning a women in jeopardy. Only an idiot or a 2-year-old could have achieved "womjep." Only a female extremist could have come up with "femjep." Extremists have been shot for less.

Mercifully, we have word carvers who are more gifted. Richard Corliss, peerless critic for Time magazine, has warmed my heart with "vidiocy," used to denounce the proliferation of videos of Amy Fisher movies. Corliss is incapable of trashing our language. He just trashes trash.

Another impressive coinage, "cyberpunk culture", including music, art, smart drugs, and psychedelics, appeared in the Feb. 8 issue of Time. Coined from "cyberconetics", meaning the science of communication and control, and "punk," otherwise known as an anti-social rebel or a hoodlum, this is a useful term that seems destined to last.

In an earlier issue of Time, author William Johnson stated that "European modernism has primitivized artists." An excellent-ize word for a sorry development in the art world of today.

Some weeks ago, a special TV broadcast on the new Russia informed us that St. Petersberg, "Slavonicized" to Petrograd in 1914, had been restored to its original name. Let us thank the Lord and all freedom fighters involved in the reversal and pray nothing will happen to prevent this once-glorious city from recarving itself.