October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month: The median age at the time of breast cancer diagnosis is 62 — meaning that half of women with breast cancer are diagnosed before age 62 and half are diagnosed afterward. While historically breast cancer diagnoses have been relatively rare in younger women, cases have been rising in recent years. In 2025, researchers estimate that 16% of women with breast cancer will be younger than 50 years of age.
My neighbor’s great-nieces were visiting her, and Karen Davis arranged for a trampoline date for them with my youngest granddaughter. Myah was happy to have some company on the trampoline; Elsie and Charli were happy to be jumping. While they were milling around on the trampoline, Elsie announced that she knew the longest word in the English language and pronounced it. I didn’t hear what the word was, but I chuckled as she went through a multi-syllabic verbalization of it.
On Thursday, October 15th, I attended a Heartland International Film Festival screening of Bird Boy with my friend and co-owner of this publication, Paula Nicewanger. We had both selected the film because of my interest in birding. “Bird Boy” tells the story of a young man who finds an ostrich egg, and nurtures it until it hatches. He becomes best friends with the bird, eventually learning to ride the bird to school, which thrills his grade-school classmates. As the credits rolled at the end of the film, both Paula and I noticed the young boy, “August” in the film, had a very long name. After the movie, the writer and director, Joel Soisson, along with his wife Claudia Templeton, took questions from the audience. Paula raised her hand and asked the two, “How do you pronounce (August’s) real name?” They looked at each other and chuckled; Templeton replied, “We call him ‘BoBo.’” BoBo’s real name is Litlhonolofatso Litlhakanyane. The movie was set in South Africa, where — apparently — all those syllables are common.
My granddaughter Myah is in second grade at Irvington Community Elementary School and has always been an avid reader. When we shared a space on University in Irvington, she would grab a book and bring it to me as I sat in my big recliner, saying to me, “Read, read.” She can read for herself now, though she does have some trouble with the multi-syllabic words.
Karen Davis’ grand-niece Elsie’s demonstration of the longest word has some competition. The October 17th edition of this publication had a “Strange But True” offering. They presented to us “Subdermatoglyphic,” which is the longest word without duplicate letters. I did not find the word in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary but did find it online. It is an “isogram,” which, as “Strange But True” noted, is a word in which no letter of the alphabet is used more than once (a form also called a “heterogram.”) The adjective comes from the field of dermatology and means “pertaining to the layer of skin beneath the fingertips.”
In the early 1970s, my first bride and I were visiting a friend she had made at the school where she was teaching. The friend introduced us to her father, and at one point, the man used the word “oblique.” He pronounced it in such an exaggerated way that it made me wish I had a pocket dictionary. Ten years later, I was at Indiana University Southeast, taking classes in English literature, and learning about poetry, and chasing down all those words and syllables.
I love language.
cjon3acd@att.net