The Ignorfreakinramus is back.

As you can see, the Ignoramus Blog has revived with the approach of summer vacation. Although I have not seen Ray Moose himself on campus in quite some time, his influence is manifest in the papers students turn in, and at this time of year they turn in quite a lot of them.

It can be overwhelming: comma splices, split infinitives, dangling modifiers—the whole range. Ray’s strategy for undermining our country begins with an attack on our literacy.

But so far no student has used the one Ray Moose linguistic innovation that I actually like: freakin’.

Such a fascinating word! Sometimes it is quite banal, serving only to emphasize the speaker’s strong emotion about the word it modifies: “Dude, he was wearing a freakin’ bandana!” Please. At other times it seems to signify that the object described is what it is in an unusually intense way: “He was driving a freakin’ hot rod!”, that is, his vehicle embodied the idea of “hot rod” to an unusual degree.

But the word’s meaning is not what makes “freakin’” interesting. What sets it apart is its grammatical placement: American slang usage prefers that “freakin’” be inserted within the word or phrase it modifies. We’re all familiar with “co” and “pre” and so on, which attach at the beginning off words like “coworker” and “presale”; we know about “ful” and “ment”, which attach at the end of words like “helpful” and “wonderment”; but one can only marvel at “Dude, he’s a megalofreakinmaniac!”, or “That is absofreakinlutely hysterical!” The possibilities are endless: “technofreakinlogical”, “superfreakinstitious”, “Vatican freakin’ II”.

I have to give the Moose credit where credit is due. He has invented a new grammatical form unparalleled in any language I know. And as a bonus, Ray Moose has provided us with the longest non-technical word in the English language:

“Antidisestablishmenfreakintarianism.”