Obloquy, Oblique, and the Raconteur
When criticism is a praise
“We listen to your stories day in day out,” Beth said. “Unless a bolt of lightning just struck you, why would you tell anything real? And don’t try to tell me it’s a just-this-once, mister.”
Having encountered the unusual word ‘obloquy’ in an international lit-mag recently, I’d set out to survey my colleagues. Eight out of eleven confused it with ‘oblique’ just as I had, two didn’t even bother giving it a thought, and Beth accused me that I’d made up both words.
According to Webster, oblique means inclined, indirect, obscure or underhanded. Obloquy is a more complex word: it is either a strongly condemnatory utterance or bad repute. While oblique is rarely used but at least understood by most, obloquy is something you can only expect to hear in a courtroom or in Cambridge, England.
More important, the accusation itself, which, no matter how harsh it may sound, is a praise in this case.
Making up a new word or a new phrase or writing an absurd but thought-provoking sentence is every wordsmith’s dream. It is an achievement.
And not having the ability to tell real from imaginary — a storyteller cannot possibly be given a higher compliment.
Or is that ‘complement’?
