My Errant Mind

Farcial.

Sounds like we have a candidate for Non-Word Word Of The Day. I’ve come across this word twice today, both times on the same news site. It made me stop and say “Farcial? What the hell?“

One article about a divorcing couple in Brooklyn says:

Aside from the wall, the Taub version of the story has some other farcical elements: Chana says her husband of more than 20 years has bugged her phones. Simon says his wife owns too many shoes.

The other was an article about former Vice President Walter Mondale criticizing current Vice President Dick Cheney. Mondale is quoted as saying:

“I think Cheney’s been at the center of cooking up farcical estimates of national risks, weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 connection to Iraq.”

— Walter Mondale

And people were giving me a hard time about using irregardless on two occasions. At least it has around 90 years of history to its credit. But farcial?

Did someone actually listen to Walter Mondale and invent a word based on something he said? Did we just witness a moment in history we could have done without?

I mean, farcial. Would that mean, like a farce? I think in both instances a different word was intended and could have been used. But, the story does not end there.

Oh no…

I decided to investigate the history of this strange pseudo-word. I have a duty as a responsible blogger after all, right? I take it very seriously. Well, kind of seriously. For the most part.

Anyway, I discovered farcial has a history.

The Unpleasant Barb In Farcial

According to the Urban Dictionary, farcial means “to rip ass in someones face” it seems. Say what? So am I to gather that Cheney not only shoots people, he rips ass in the President’s face?

I dug further. Farcial appears in articles on politics. It has its own top-level domain website that is one of those worthless traffic leech search pages. But where did it come from, and why haven’t I heard it more often?

It seems that Ivan Turgenev, a Russian novelist and playwright apparently used the terms to describe Tolstoy’s works. Turgenev was born in 1818 and died in 1883. That’s back before irregardless came into use! Maybe it’s time we give the word some due?

Maybe it’s time for farcial to move out of the lexiconical cellar and into the light? Waitaminute. Lexiconical? Is that a word? Hmmm….

Distracted By Lexiconical And Morrissey

So I attempt to track down the word lexiconical. My search leads me to the Morrissey-Solo Forums. They’re dedicated to Stephen Patrick Morrissey, former singer of The Smiths, of course.

I find that a member named Cilli came up with it back in 2000 in a post that was elaborated on:

“There are some of you out there in Mozzaland who simply seem to be unable to accept anything other than the strict caricature of Morrissey presented to us either by the press or by the yen of our imaginations, and anything that runs contrary to these harbored images is considered hypocrisy or lies or whatever else is in that vein of lexiconical words.”

(source: Morrissey-Solo Forums)

She clarified her use of it later when someone asked where she came up with the term:

“Cinderella, I don’t work at editing my messages. I don’t look up every adjective I use. I think the beautiful thing about English is its looseness and elasticity, and if I’ve made a mistake, does it really matter to you as much as it seems?”

(source: Morrissey-Solo Forums)

I’ve rarely seen such a beautiful description of why English just flat out rocks. And why the whole world ought to speak it!

Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!

Unlike the crudeness of farcial, I think lexiconical sounds like a better candidate for admittance into the popular American…err…lexicon. One seems to originate with a stuffy old Russian playwright and novelist, the other with a saucy Morrissey fan. Pardon the pun (given the origins of lexiconical), but the Morrissey forum origins is more of a Cinderella story.

And I used it. That lends it all kinds of weight in my book.

Farcial. That’s just a word better off dead. Unfortunately, we may be stuck with it and people ripping ass for a long time to come.

[Note: Pulling out all the stops and cutting no corners in the quest for a funny post, I even went undercover, signing up for Morrissey-Solo Forum membership. No sacrifice is too great for a story. Never mind that I didn't need to. I thought I was going to be able to track Cilli down and be able to message this person and ask for an interview. Alas, there was no Cilli in the current active members list.]

[Update: OK, some people didn't get the joke about farcical purposely being misspelled as farcial throughout the post everywhere except where it was quoted. The intent was to create a farcical parody using the word itself. And note the opening bit about responsible blogging, as well as the bit about "We don't need no stinkin' rules!" Sometimes my humor is perhaps too obscure; apparently parody has practical limits. I briefly changed the spelling to be correct, but then as that defeats the entire point of the post---farcial is not farcical---I changed it back to the original format. The way it's supposed to be.

However, the spellcheckers of the blogosphere should be satisfied now that they know I know what I'm doing. They had their way for five minutes. Also, if you have ever read War & Peace, you might sympathize with this kind of humor a bit more.]