Bamboozled. Flabbergasted. Discombobulated. Shenanagins. Lollygag. Malarkey. Kerfuffle. Brouhaha. Nincompoop. Skedaddle. Pumpernickel.

About three months ago my eldest son sent me a meme titled “some of the best words literally ever”, with the suggestion that they might come in handy for my blog. He sent my thoughts cattywampus as I took on his challenge and elbowed them in one (and once two) at a time. I had seen all of them before and generally knew what they meant, except for today’s word: I mistook cattywampus for a noun. After all, it sounds like some kind of trouble a Dr. Suess character would get into.

Vocabulary, along with Spelling (or Gnilleps, the more challenging backwards version from the board game Cranium), are some of my favorite things. Is that nerdy? I ask myself (also answering myself by unconsciously nodding my head). Well, yes, in fact it’s SUPERnerdy. But I choose to emphasize the SUPER. I mean, we all want to have a superpower, right? So what’s wrong with wanting to know All The Words? Maybe it’s not as handy as invisibility or shooting spiderwebs out of your wrists, but it’s the one I want to work on. Because no superhero was born in a day.

As much as I have aspired at times to read the dictionary cover to cover, I have never got past “aardvark” because reading the dictionary is actually (spoiler alert) Pretty Boring. I mean, the first page is a whole column of the different meanings and uses for the letter “A”. Who knew? (Well, Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster, for two.) As handy as a dictionary is, or its online counterpart, it doesn’t serve well as a textbook.

So how do we increase our wordpower? The old Reader’s Digest quiz had it partly right: read an unfamilar word in a sentence and take a guess. Because the answer to that question is another of my favorites: Read, Read, Read. While entertaining my 7-year old niece this week (or rather, she was entertaining me), she read aloud for a few chapters from one of the classic Dav Pilkey books about Dog Man – the same Dav Pilkey who purveys Captain Underpants. (Is that the right use of the word purvey? I’m not totally sure. I’m just gonna go with it.) In this seemingly innocuous book for those in the 6+ set, Navy sometimes consulted me, sometimes barreled ahead and correctly pronounced such words as: obnoxious, consequences, humiliation and – my favorite – dopamine responders.

It reminded me of how I used to read everything as a kid, how I have sometimes consulted, sometimes barreled ahead without looking up a weird word because the story was just too darn good. Eventually, if you read and encounter sisyphean or solipsistic, perspicacious or pugillistic enough times, you’ll actually figure out what they mean. Or you’ll look it up. Or you’ll pick up an easier book – like Dog Man – where the known to unknown ratio is a little more palatable. But still challenging – and a darn good story.