This Mother’s Day, I gifted my long-gone Mother with a posthumous answer to a vocabulary challenge she liked to pose. My Mother was thirty-nine when I was born; old for her generation to give birth. I was thirty-nine when she died; young for my generation to lose a parent. We were not close, not really, but when I think of her, I am grateful for her humour and I pardon her failings. I’m probably more generous with my pardons than if she were still here and able to drive me crazy.

She loved language; her favourite brain-teaser was to try to name the (‘only’) five words in the English language that end in ‘dous’. She could only think of three; tremendous, stupendous and horrendous. It is impossible to find the answer using a dictionary or a thesaurus or any other analog resource available in her time. She let the problem go and contented herself with correcting our grammar at every opportunity we gave her. 

Artificial intelligence solved the problem in seconds. Hazardous and jeopardous round out the top five, but it turns out there are dozens of words ending in ‘dous’. Technology can take all the fun out of things.

If my Mother were here, I believe she would claim that all this technology is for the birds, there is more value to genuine intelligence. True. On the other hand, she would have loved streaming services, primarily for the luxury of watching Coronation Street whenever she wanted without the need to shush anyone who dared interrupt without waiting for a commercial break. She would have found that splendidous.

Yes, splendidous is a word and I’m adopting it in honour of Mother’s Day.

Keep your joy.

Anne Milne is an every Sunday blogger, unless it’s a holiday weekend. Or summertime. Facebook or email.