Indefi-fatidi-ga-flipping-impossible.

posted in: Word Nerd 4
It won't surprise you that the images that come up in a search for "indefatigable" are pretty weak sauce. Instead, enjoy Spanish motorcross guy Maikel Melero doing this, instead. Photo: Carlos Delgado
It won’t surprise you that the images that come up in a search for “indefatigable” are pretty weak sauce. Instead, enjoy Spanish motorcross guy Maikel Melero doing this. Photo: Carlos Delgado

Indefatigable.

Indefatigable. Indefatigable.

Indef — OH, FOR LORD’S SAKE!

I just hate that word because I cannot pronounce it. Years! Years I try, years I end up with something that sounds like a dog trying to speak English or a mush-mouthed come-on word from a very drunk man, as in, “Baby, you’re jusht.. Wow, indegfahekgaaaaaahh — buy me a drink.” To make matters worser, I usually try not one but several of the homemade variations below, as I’ll say “indefatigable” once, get mad that I know how to use the word in a sentence but can never successfully pronounce it, then try again with another version, fail again, and then just say, “You know, like, uh, unwavering.” My attempts have included:

indefatigatible
indefatable-gull
indafigatable

I’m about to indefuggetaboutit. Anyone else have issues with this one? Tricks to remember how to say it?

I ask because one can change these things. For the longest time, I could never quite remember what the word cipher meant. I would kinda recall that it meant…mysterious? Murky? I knew that wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t lock it into my brain, which is a shame because it’s such a great word. Then one day I realized that I know and use the word decipher all the time! To decipher means to figure out something unclear, especially something you read or study, like writing. But of course! A cipher is a secret way of writing. To decipher it would be to figure it out. Voila! The vocabulary needle gets moved.

But the other one. The one up there. Still no good.

4 Responses

  1. Annie
    | Reply

    Dilapidated

  2. Kathi Butler
    | Reply

    Rural is my word. I sound like a cross between a growling barking dog.

  3. Taylor
    | Reply

    For me it’s the simple word crayon. No matter how hard I try, it comes out as crown. And I’ve been coveting crayons since I could barely walk (one christmas I took every penny I had earned and been given to toys r us and plopped it all down on a 96 color set of Crayolas that came with an amazing tiered storage case that, gasp, had a sharpener built in. And it had fluorescent colors, brand new at the time). Take that. 🙂

  4. Sue Norton
    | Reply

    The word is aluminum. Sorry , I just say tin foil.

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