You're listening to Away with Words. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

Well, if you're a word freak like us, you know, there's nothing, nothing like that moment when you meet a word for the very first time.

You know, that little frisson, when you first encounter a word,

well, there was a word like that that caught me up short the other day.

And that word was E-C-A-L-E-G-O-N-U-C-C-L-E-G-O-N.

And, grant, it means a neighbor whose house is on fire.

I know that. I learned that from Will Shorts. Yes, and it's a neighbor whose house is on fire.

I know that.

I learned that from Will Shorts.

Yes, and it's a reference to a character in the Iliad,

and you won't find it in many modern dictionaries today or any modern dictionaries,

but it has been floating around in the past in at least a couple of them,

and Will told us that he encountered it in a crossword puzzle.

Yeah, those crossword people are about too clever for me.

I came across a word like that recently.

There was a discussion about what it takes to break through writers' block.

You're like me, right, Martha?

Sometimes you've got to do stuff on deadline, and the words won't come.

Oh, yeah.

So one guy was claiming he's like, you should just force yourself to write, and then the dam will break, and all this genius will come pouring out, right? And then another guy was saying, he's saying, that you have to have Kakawithi's Scribendi. Right. I know that we're... Of course you do. Cacaweethi Scribendi C-A-C-O-E-T-H-E-S-C-R-I-B-E-N-D-I.

And it translates as the irresistible urge to write.

...