Fecund -- Pregnant With Meaning

I'm not sure I want to feel like I can relate to the character of Jules in the new film The Kids Are All Right, but during a particular scene, I most definitely did.

When Jules suggests allowing the garden to be untamed and fecund, I'm sure many people in the audience had the same reaction as the character Paul, namely a quizzical "what?" Except for any word nerds in the theater, some of whom may have shared my reaction: "Feh-kund? Isn't it fee-kund?"

I've been in that situation, rambling along in a conversation and blurting out some 5- or 10-dollar word that brings the chatter to a stumbling halt and elicits a "wait, what did you just say?" reaction. Most often that reaction is accompanied by a bemused smile, like Paul's, though sometimes by a jeering snicker: "A whatsit?" "C'mon, say that again!"

Oh, sure, some of us logophiles are word snobs, dropping terms like bloviating or versimilitude into a conversation just to show off. (Yeah, I'm thinking about you, George Will.) But many former vocabulary quiz acers really aren't thinking about it when they employ a word like fecund. It's a good word. It perfectly encapsulates the intended meaning. It's just not used by many people, as Paul notes.

Jules is hardly a word snob. Playing Scrabble with her daughter, she argues the case for why zoomer is a perfectly valid word: zoom is a word; ergo, something that zooms is a zoomer. (Hence, I can use acer to refer to someone who aces vocabulary quizzes.) Of course, no dictionary will back up her case (or mine).

If you're going to drop polysyllabic or obscure terms into conversations, you just have to be prepared to accept the smiles and occasional scoffs. Still, as I've stated before in this blog, it's a pity that many people accept the convention that such words should be the sole purview of bookworms or the collegiate set. Whether you pronounce it fee-kund or feh-kund, it's a nifty word to trip off your tongue. I like that Jules and Paul can appreciate a word like fecund. Doesn't make up for their significant character flaws, but it adds a likeable aspect to their characters, at least in my book.

As for the pronunciation of fecund, it's a to-may-to, to-mah-to situation; either is accepted by all dictionaries. However, I prefer the long e given that the term derives from the same root as fetus. Somehow, feh-kund feels as odd to my tongue as feh-tus or feh-tal position. Or as feet-ah cheese does, for that matter. Eeyw.

Dictionary Definition
from Webster's Third New International Dictionary
fecund
1 a: characterized by having produced many offspring or having yielded vegetation, fruit or crops to a marked or satisfying degree
b: capable of producing : not sterile or barren : markedly fertile
2: marked by noteworthy intellectual productivity and inventiveness Syn. see fertile