This word popped up when I was listening to “Royal Jelly” by Dewey Cox/John C. Reilly on my way home tonight. It is one of the funniest Dylan parodies I’ve ever heard (“The skinny scanty sylph trashed the apothecary diplomat” is a typical line):

Anyway, the word “perspicacity” came through the speakers and I immediately laughed. I don’t think I ever heard that word until I watched “Walk Hard,” the movie in which the song appears. The word means “keenness of mental perception and understanding,” but I just like the way it sounds. It’s hard to slip into conversation, though.

Back in the day, I’d occasionally bet a press secretary for an elected official that I could slip words like this into the newspaper. That’s harder than it might sound. I could write a word like “serendipitous” into a story, but that doesn’t mean it would survive the copy desk (although I found that calling the copy editor and explaining the bet did help stack the odds in my favor). “Perspicacity” never would have made the cut, though. It might have even have earned me a phone call from my boss, warning me to quit putting on airs up there in Washington. He wouldn’t have understood that I was just trying to make a few bucks.

It’s just fun to say “perspicacity” out loud, with all of those popping P and sibilant S sounds, not to mention the odd emphasis on the ‘ca’ in the middle of the word. Perspicacity! Perspicacity! Perspicacity! Nice.