Demulcent
Entry #1 in Dr. Waffle's Lexical Lucubrations
This is the first in a new weekly series of micro-essays using weird, wild, and wonderful words from Dr. Waffle’s venerable list.
demulcent, adj.
Soothing, lenitive, mollifying, allaying irritation.1
< Latin dēmulcēnt-em, present participle of dēmulcēre demulce v. < Latin dēmulcēre to stroke down, to soothe caressingly < de- prefix 1a + mulcēre to soothe.
[“Demulcent” can be used either as a noun or an adjective, but in today’s micro-essay, I use it as an adjective.]
The Nose Knows
Since I am currently suffering from a horrifying, unjust, end-of-semester cold,2 I have been thinking a lot about parts of my body I rarely notice: for example, the very upper edges of the outer rims of my nostrils, which have become the epicenter of my universe. They are raw, they are red, they are ... flaky (sorry). Apparently if you blow your nose once every 4.7 seconds for three days straight, even the most gossamer of tissues will eventually abrade your tender nose holes. Which makes sense if you stop to think about it: tissues are made of paper, which is made of wood, which is made of trees. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that rubbing a tree against your face over and over again will make your face hurt. This is why the Tissue Industrial Complex invented a version of their product containing lotion, which I used to think an abomination on par with Cool Ranch Doritos, but I now secretly wish I had at my bedside this very moment. What I would not give for a salve-soaked Kleenex, a moistened mouchoir, a sweetly demulcent hanky to press against my pained proboscis.
My kingdom for a Puffs Plus.
YOUR HOMEWORK: Go use “demulcent” in the wild, then report back here in the comments! (Bonus for using it as a noun!)
Right off the bat, the very first dictionary definition in the very first entry in “Dr. Waffle’s Lexical Lucubrations” poses a philosophical problem: what if the definition contains a new word—lenitive!—that should itself be included on the venerable word list? In theory, we could enter an infinite loop, a time-space wormhole of undefined words from which we might never escape. In order to stave off this terrifying possibiity, I’ve made an executive decision that any new word (lenitive! you wily bastard) contained in a previous word’s definition is understood to be covered by that same definition.
I wrote this several days ago when actively suffering. Now I am recovered, although the memory and the cough both linger.