Episode 1: What is Lexicomedy!?

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Episode 1 :  What is Lexicomedy?

If you search for Lexicomedy in a dictionary, or even on the internet; you are likely to be disappointed.

You won't find it there.

Not yet.

The word has been suggested by this humble blogger, who has spent a lifetime borrowing thousands of words, quite shamelessly, from dictionaries of every persuasion. It seemed only fair, before bidding farewell to the world of blogging—or perhaps merely to good sense—to return the favour by gifting at least one word back.

So, dear Oxford, Cambridge, et al., are you reading this?

Perhaps not.

You are, after all, engaged in the solemn business of recording language, whereas Lexicomedy concerns itself with the far more frivolous business of making language laugh.

The Etymology

Lexicomedy is a modern compound coined from the Greek léxis (λέξις), meaning word, speech, or style of expression, and comedy, from Greek kōmōidía (κωμῳδία), referring to a dramatic work intended to amuse.

Thus, Lexicomedy may literally be understood as:

“Comedy born of words.”

Or, somewhat more precisely:

“Humour whose principal instrument is language itself.”

In lighter vein, we might define it as:

The art of provoking laughter by elevating the ordinary into the magnificently over-articulated.

Or, in still simpler words:

The sophisticated art of inducing uncontrollable laughter by deploying an alarmingly disproportionate quantity of vocabulary in the service of an embarrassingly simple idea.

Now we may proceed to the serious definition.

Lexicomedy is a literary genre in which humour arises primarily from the inventive, elegant, ironic, or extravagantly playful use of language itself.

Unlike conventional comedy, in which words merely narrate or deliver the joke, in Lexicomedy the words are the joke.

The comedy resides in unexpected coinages, extravagant metaphors, mock erudition, linguistic inversions, exaggerated formality, playful etymologies, grandiloquent vocabulary, and delightfully disproportionate expressions.

In Lexicomedy, language ceases to be merely a vehicle for humour.

It becomes the humour.

Some Characteristics of Lexicomedy

Among its more readily identifiable characteristics are:

-Inventive neologisms — such as the word Lexicomedy itself.

-Lexytoons — humorous visual creations in which words, letters, typography, and lexical ideas become part of the joke.

-Anagrams — words and phrases rearranged with the same letters into unexpected, often mischievous, alternative meanings.

-Mock-official institutions — such as The Ministry of Grandiloquence and The Society for the Prevention of Linguistic Malnutrition. You will encounter them soon enough.

-Grandiloquent treatment of trivial subjects deployed with a twinkle rather than with pretension.

-Affectionate self-parody.

-Linguistic self-awareness.

-And, naturally, a somewhat unhealthy affection for words.

How Is Lexicomedy Different?

A reasonable reader may now ask:

Isn't this merely satire, parody, or verbosity wearing a fancy new name?

A fair question.

Lexicomedy differs from satire in that its primary target is not society, politics, institutions, or human folly, but language itself.

It differs from parody because it does not merely imitate a style for ridicule; it celebrates the style even while gently exaggerating it.

And it differs from mere verbosity because, in Lexicomedy, every elaborate expression ultimately serves a humorous purpose.

So:

Not satire.
Not parody.
Not mere verbosity.
Not merely grandiloquent correspondence.

Lexicomedy.

A new literary genre—or, at the very least, a perfectly respectable excuse for excessive vocabulary.

Why Lexicomedy?

Because comedy, like language, deserves to evolve.

We live in an age overflowing with stand-up comedians, many of them wonderfully gifted performers. Yet comedy sometimes seems content to recycle a familiar assortment of ingredients: shock value, risqué innuendo, predictable stereotypes, celebrity roasts, and the occasional assault on good taste.

After a while, even the loudest laughter can begin to sound suspiciously repetitive.

Meanwhile, countless Millennials and members of Generation Z cheerfully queue up, and willingly part with impressive sums of money; to hear yet another affectionate roast of the Baby Boomer generation.

Well, every story deserves another narrator.

Perhaps it is time for someone from the Baby Boomer generation to rise—not in indignation, but in good humour—and gently declare:

“My dear youngsters, pray moderate your relentless teasing. We, too, have a few comic arrows in our quiver; only ours happen to be feathered with words rather than barbs.”

That, in essence, is the spirit of Lexicomedy: less ridicule, more language;less volume, more wit; less provocation, more playful imagination.

After all, if words can illuminate, persuade, inspire and console, surely they can also make us laugh—without losing their dignity in the process.

The Lexicomedy Experiment

This blog series presents an exchange of letters, epistles, and messages between this blogger, a proud representative of the Baby Boomer generation, and Ms. Fussy Zaroor, an eloquent emissary of Generation Z.

More about her in subsequent posts.

If all goes according to our delightfully unscientific plan, these exchanges may constitute the first experimental prototype of the literary genre hereby proposed: LEXICOMEDY.

Readers are cordially invited to decide for themselves whether the ensuing correspondence belongs to literature, linguistics, comedy—or simply to the delightful excesses of two generations separated by decades yet united by a shared affection for language and wit.

A few episodes of the first season of Lexicomedy have already found their way into this blog series. They may now be regarded, retrospectively and with entirely unjustified confidence, as the inaugural experiments in Lexicomedy.

Readers curious enough to explore this fledgling genre are warmly invited to browse them through the links below:

-The Next Episode number 2

- The Lexicomedy Repository of Linguistic Experiments. ( The Lexicomedy Line-up or  the list of all episodes.)

(My  Blogs on diverse subjects: Eclectic Blogs.)

Pankaj Khanna

Urban gardener, rustic cook. Music enthusiast. Curious blogger since 2009. Cyclist for over five decades. Word lover: Epeolater. Anagram addict. Punster with pen in hand, pun in mind, and a pan in the heart/hearth. Steam-engine devotee: a ferroequinophile. Avid avian watcher. Magic-square aficionado. Retired mathematics teacher and an apprentice Lexicomedian.

(My  Blogs on diverse subjects: Eclectic Blogs.)