Robert Witriol

August 20, 2004

Daniel:

Perfect. “Pundint” drives me crazy too. Even otherwise smart people are saying it now. For example, Jim Lehrer on PBS. Maybe if you bump into him in the hall at NPR or PBS you could have a word with him.

Your comments about “looking up ‘pundint’ in the dictionary” reminded me of a childhood memory. When I was a child, I brought home a word that I had learned on the school bus. It was the word Jean Shepherd referred to as “the Queen Mother” of dirty words. F blank blank blank. Fudge. Well when I used the word in front of my mother, she (being a progressive student of child psychology) took me right over to the dictionary and told me to look it up. Of course, it was nowhere to be found. She then told me “There’s no such word. Never say it again.”

Needless to say, the technique did not work.

Robert Witriol

Rochester, NY

I'm not allowed in the hall at NPR.