The one that got away

I wish I could go back and re-edit one of the major papers from my M.A.

Just the other day I was thinking about 'real' words (no doubt because of some recent posts on LL) and I remembered a comment by a fine professor in the margin of my paper in which I investigated Virginia Woolf's commentary on ostracization and her use of Greek as a tool of inclusion intrusion and transcendence to the unobtainable.

Dr J-G wrote "I don't find enamoration in the dictionary" and suggested a word like enamourment instead.

And I just rolled over. I guess I wanted her to stamp her OK on the paper and send me on my way.

But enamoration was so much better! And in a paper that's all about daring to speak in ways that aren't expected or common and to say things that are not approved by existing systems I was supposed to say 'I don't want to pick a word that that meets your approval to indicate a state of rapture. I can't help but resist you.'

But I could have even used her argument against her. Enamoration is in the OED. And it falls under a headword with that gorgeous † and the lovely Obs. rare tag. And it is defined simply as ecstacy of love. Oh I wish I had stuck with it. It was a paper that began with And as the first word of an interrogative sentence. I began with a presumptuous demand for an eely answer.

And yet I was unwilling to take either approach: to argue that the word was sanctioned by the OED; or (more romantically) stick with my word because I wanted to use it and it worked.

Plus those four nasals in enamourment are so klutzy.