Word of the Day

I've loved words all my life. I think I can thank not only mom for that, but nana as well (my mom's mom). There was always a love of language and reading and etymology and something fascinating, linguistically speaking, to discover. I can remember perusing mom's word origin books for hours. I also still will find myself ruminating over a word, breaking it apart and thinking it over until it's become an entity in its own right and even my mental pronounciation has changed slightly as I consider the oddity of words as the building blocks of lanugage. Seirously, haven't you ever said something (or thought it) and then remarked to yourself what an odd word that is? I would qualify this as a daily activity.

Consequently, just about every day I go over to Merriam-Webster and check out their word of the day. I'm always on the prowl for new vocabulary - not because I necessarily use the words to try to sound grown up and important, but more because there are so many words out there - and they have such rich and varied meanings and more often than not do a better job of expressing the actual intent of what you'd like to say than the pedestrian sub-set of language that we (and I include myself here!) generally use on a given day. Unfortunately, Merriam-Webster has been very disappointing lately in regard to their word of the day choices. But today, today they have hit a low from which I'm not sure they'll ever recover.

Today's word of the day: Techno-thriller.

Is this seriously a word that the average, let's be generous, fourteen year old doesn't have an idea of the meaning? Isn't the "Word of the Day" supposed to introduce you to phenomenal new words so that your vocabulary can soar into the heights of splendor? And even if the idea is more to provide meanings for commonly mis-used words...techno-thriller? Shouldn't anyone with a moderate grasp of the language be able to figure that out contextually? And why would anyone struggling to learn English care about the banality that is the word "techno-thriller"?(Banality. Now that's a fun word.)

Does anyone have a word of the day site that's less pathetic?

(And yes, I know I already posted one really long post today, and I seriously contemplated saving this for a rainy day - except for two things: 1) Today it is raining cats, dogs and potentially farm animals here in DC, so we're definitely qualified for the rainy day aspect and 2) I've tried to save ideas before - even gone so far as to scribble them down on a scrap of paper...and I never remember either where I've put the paper or that I even had said paper full of great blogging ideas when I'm staring at my screen, trying desperately to lumber over the enormous block some idiot writer left in my path. Thus, today you get two really long posts and Monday, we'll you'll probably get something rife with banality.)