Discombobulating and heartening in equal measure

 You might have seen Twitter’s latest wheeze. 

A man called James Melville who lives in Fife and has opinions about Brexit that you either have to be angry about or be angry that other people might not agree with him, has written a humblebrag tweet. A humblebrag tweet is one where you pretend you don’t know how fabulous you think you are but write something that you think makes you look amazing. The trouble with these tweets is that they make people who don’t think they are amazing a bit jealous. They are also funny and faintly ridiculous and often leave the reader asking the question, “Did that really happen?” There is a special acronym for this on Twitter: #DHOTYA (which is an award given by a self appointed Twitter arbiter of the truth account. The problem is that truth is stranger than fiction, so it’s often impossible to tell whether the humblebrag actually happened.

This tweet read: 

Just popped into a local butcher’s shop in Fife. And the butcher said, “are you James Melville from Twitter? I love your feed. What you are doing is amazing. Keep going.”

This sort of thing is happening a lot now. It’s both discombobulating and heartening in equal measure.

As you can see, it ticks all the boxes.  Most of Twitter thought it was hilarious and responded with their own parody tweets. I can highly recommend reading through thousands of them if you need to avoid writing some words.  

The national and local press picked up on this phenomenon and rang all the butcher's shops in Fife.  They all denied it and a vegetarian who had chosen the twitter handle ButcherOfFife was in his element, refuting everything.

I stumbled upon it when I noticed the number of people using the word discombobulating on Twitter.  It is one of my favourite words.  Mainly because it describes my usual state of being but also because, like most young children, it was the first big word that I found that I wanted to use in my writing all the time. Everyone I wrote about, when I was 9, was discombobulated.  It made teachers write 'good word' in red pen on my stories and that was all the validation I needed in life to believe I was a good person.  It's also a funny, made up word and I love those.   It derives from America in the early 1800s and was meant to be an imitation of some high-faulting Latin speaker. So, it has the benefit of not only showing how language evolves but also giving a nod to a language that doesn't.

I've often wondered why you can't be combobulated.  There are lots of people who seem to have everything completely together and it would be nice to describe them that way.  

Mr James Melville walked into the butchers shop to order the steak that he would later eat bloody with a nice bottle of Beaujolais from his cellar.  He was certain that the butcher would recognise him from his witty banter about the greatness of Brexit on Twitter because James has the kind of life that most of us can only dream of.  His shirts perfectly pressed and kept by colour in his wardrobe, and everything in his life is perfectly combobulated.

There are lots of words like that.  Cooth is another one. If you are not uncooth then surely you can be cooth. There are more words with negative prefixes that can't be used alone. (indelible, disgruntled, disgusted, disheveled, debunk, nonplussed, ungainly, unruly, unkempt, unwiedly - I'm sure there are more.)

I managed to waste nearly half a day on all of this until I found something equally heartening.  It was an example of how language has evolved to make something that those of us who find travel upsets their sense of togetherness even more than normal. 

Milwaukee airport has this sign.  I wonder if it's worth taking a trip as I could do with being recombobulated.