War of the Words, Part the Second

As summer started, Gary and I were walking to taunt some horses at the stables down the road. (He likes to yell “Sugar!” to get them to come to the fence. I am sure someday one will realize he never has sugar and will kick him in the head.)

He was talking about his sister and how generally down and inconsolable she is. “She’s just so morbose. It’s so discouraging for my parents to listen to -“
“Morbose?” I asked.
“Yes, morbose,” he said impatiently. “She just goes on for hours, and Mom and dad don’t need -“
“MorBOSE. You say this is a word.”
“Yes.” (Big sigh.) “Morbose.” (Rolls eyes.) “Having the quality of morbosity.” (Air of condescension.)
“A real word. A real word in English.”
“Yes!”
“I will bet you.” (Pinky shake).
He sneered, “Oh you are so going to lose. Morbose is totally a word.”
“Not in my language.”

The rest of the walk home was devoted to Gary further convincing himself morbose was a word, and me mocking Gary. (“Ohhhhh! Yes of course! Like, ‘She was overwhelmed with morbiciousness.’”)

Unfortunately, I did not record the exchange in which I specified “This is the bet: It’s an English word that means inconsolable.” And I can tell you right now Gary is reading this on his Blackberry and hopping up and down yelling: “No! We never agreed to that!” because of course as soon as we looked it up we found morbose is indeed a word, just one that means “unhealthy.”

So again, I unjustly lost Word War Two. I lost both wars on a technicality. However, the next victory goes to me in Word War Three.