My/our new word for the week.
Given this post is dedicated to writing and editing, and the gals from the Triple Threat Investigation Agency (a Hawaii-based mystery series that sometimes borders on the silly and willy-nilly), I thought I’d attempt to get back to that, given I’d digressed a bit of late. That, folks, is what might once have been called a run-on sentence. But nobody seems to give a <bleeping bleep> about grammar and the like anymore. So who really cares (but the few of us who still embrace syntax and the like)? But I digress. Again.
As my acupuncturist was inserting one of many needles, my stomach started to rumble—so loudly, it sounded like a famished moose, voracious rhinoceros, and ravenous Komodo dragon were in the room.
Dr. D asked if I knew what those stomach sounds were called. Alas, I did not. “Haven’t a clue,” I humbly confessed over the snorts of the rhino.
“Borborygmi.”
Borborygmi? The sound of that word struck me as insanely funny. I thought it might be fun to share a vid of that—and they do have them!—but they were pretty damn dry, not comical at all, save for one. A medical gent (so I assumed) was truly trying to sound very factual, and the more he got into it—sounding oh so serious and knowledgeable—the more I had to laugh. We’ll spare him and not post that vid. 😉.
So, friends, our new word of the week—hmm, maybe we’ll make it the month—is borborygmi. The noises your stomach makes … intestinal sounds that occur during the digestive process (hmm, given I’d not eaten for some 18 hours, I’m not so sure I was “digesting” anything at the time). The smooth muscles that occupy our stomach squeeze food and gas through 30’ of small and large intestine. This activity, called peristalsis, is what creates those stomach sounds.
Who knew!? Well, I do now . . . and so do you.
The Writer's Grab-Bag 