Argh

Today at work (where I used to work, where I'm working again freelance), someone told me that "micturation" doesn't mean spitting, it means urination. At first I thought he was wrong, he was mixed up, but he forwarded me the Merriam-Websters link and there it was, a definition exclusively concerning urination. I accused him of faking the dictionary entry, but weakly. I had to face the unpleasant truth.

God! How embarrassing. Not just that I've thought all this time I knew exactly what that word meant, and had included it in my "favorites" in my bio for this blog. I was also dismayed thinking about all the people who might have read my profile and been put off. How many dates could I have gone on if I hadn't said my passion was going to the bathroom?

But also, such confusion! What's the fancy word for spitting, if it isn't micturation?

The fancy word for chewing is mastication. Therefore the fancy word for spitting is micturation.

I feel the way I did when I was younger and I pretended to be someone called Mary Ellen Memesis, and I wrapped up clothing belonging to family members and gave it back to them as Christmas gifts, signing them "with love, Mary Ellen Memesis." No one thought it was funny at all, and it turned out memesis didn't mean what I thought it did, which was "imitation of life." I thought giving people things they already owned was a form of imitation of life. But it wasn't.