Caliginous Caliginy, the C-iest C of C's

I’m late to A, B, C, and D for Penny Fuller’s “The A-Z of Unusual Words Challenge”, but I want to try to join for the next letter and I get a kick out of checking off boxes in order. So, before I do competition E, I figure I should do A, B, C and D, even though I can’t vie for the top B-spots and that sweet $1 tip. I’ve already done letter A and B (which you can find here and here) and am chugging along now to letter C.

Now that we've checked the unofficial challenge boxes, lets just start out by saying I made up the word caliginy. I think. It probably has the exact same meaning as caligene in Italian, but its basically just me putting the English template of Y at the end of a word to change it from a verb or adjective to a noun. Which means we have to know what the original word, caliginous means to deduce caliginy (which honestly you probably already have)

Caliginous

Caliginous: adjective - dark and misty and gloomy, devoid of or deficient in light or brightness; shadowed or black.

Now, I can't say that my fascination with this word is tangible. It's not like my soul is caliginous, or the hopes of my life is caliginous, or my memory is caliginous. I don't have a memory related to caliginy (which would be the quality {of darkness, mistiness, gloominess, of being devoid of or deficient in light or brightness, of being shadowed or black}, if I've done my Englishing right). There isn't some fond farewell or hark back. I just like the word.

I like the way the word rolls off my tongue. I like the way is sounds in my cheeks. I like the way it starts at the back of the throat, pops to the front, walks itself back, and manages to end on a sound that is somehow in all parts of the pronunciation tract at once.

I like the image it brings up for me, and for some odd reason even though its devoid of light its somehow a shiny sparkling void in my mind, which makes no sense, but hey, my brain gets to make no sense. I mean, fork, I have such a pre-fascination with this word that I didn't even need to pick it out from a list. I put in "weird words that start with c" to google, a preview popped up (not AI, never trust the AI preview) and I had no other eyes for any c-word than caliginous. For A, I scrolled and scrolled a list to come up with Amorce. For B, I started scrolling, ran my eyes down-down a list, hit Bellarmine, had a visceral laugh reaction and settled right then and there. But for C, there wasn't even a scroll. I didn't even have to see the definition. It only had to be there in a preview blurb and I had eyes for no other.

So here's to my dark little obsession, caliginous.

Poem

A haiku for letter C

void swallowing void

gelatinous horizon

float caliginous

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Thanks for visiting my page. I added this little blurb on Entry Letter A just to see how it works out. So far I like it.

If you'd like to see more of my work here are two of my favorite poems that I've written:

Butter Cream: https://vocal.media/poets/butter-cream

When we were young: https://vocal.media/poets/when-we-were-young-m7bv010dxa

I hope to see more of you later!