Feb 16, 2024 4 min read

The word was “jilt” and had I gotten my turn on the Scrabble board, it would have been worth more than 40 points. I’d been hanging onto that J tile since we first started the game, left it lurking there on my rack through several dud turns, awaiting the right opportunity to land my word on a triple-word square with a double-letter square for the T.

But no.

“Jilt,” said my opponent. “That’s not a word.”

And so began a disagreement that turned into a big, old nasty spat that ended with me scooping the tiles off the game board, folding up the board and ending the whole thing.

Since then, I’ve wondered about my part in the kerfuffle, which is, in fact, a word allowed in Scrabble. Maybe I am too competitive, the result of being the middle of three girls. I also am a wordy person, being a writer and all. Also, I have been at the bad end of a jilting situation.

“Jilt,” I said. “It means to get broken up with.”

“I’ve heard it as a verb,” said my opponent, “but it’s not a noun.”

I looked across the table and wondered: how does a person live and read and communicate with people for more than 60 years, and not know that “jilt” is a word? Granted, it’s not something you hear every day – “ghosted” and “dumped” are probably more common synonyms – but still.

So disorienting, to encounter a word that we either had never heard or, worse, had been mispronouncing all these years. An example is “ribald,” which is defined as a “reference to sexual matters in an irreverent way.” Think “bawdy.” Ribald is a word you might find in film or book reviews, and I’d seen the word probably hundreds of times and yet had never spoken it aloud. As I would read, I’d say the words in my head, and hear rye-bald, with the emphasis on both syllables.

Nope, it’s ribbled, rhyming with nibbled. Back in my days as a TV news reporter, I never had occasion to say the word during a live shot and it’s probably a good thing because I would have gotten it wrong.

Another word is “mischievous,” incorrectly given four syllables by me and almost everyone else who speaks English. It’s mis-chuh-viss. And there’s “quinoa” (keen-wah), “espresso” (no x), “prostrate” (doesn’t mean what people think it means), and “chic” (sheek).

The reset for that last one came in graduate school when, in a class speech, I used the word to describe dance music, pronouncing it “chick.” And let’s not forget all the orange “sherbert” our grandmother served us when we were kids.

All of this falls under the umbrella of not knowing the things we don’t know. It does make me wonder what other gaps I have, clueless things I’m writing or saying that others notice but are too kind to point out. A friend and I often talk about what we call the “embarrassing drive home,” the first hour after a social gathering during which we replay every stupid thing we’d said, including mispronunciations (and there’s a “nun” in that word, but not a “noun” – but I knew that.)

Before we bailed on the Scrabble game, I looked up “jilt” and confirmed that, yes, it’s fair game. But by then my opponent was frustrated, and I was way ahead in the score anyway. We put that box away and got out Chutes and Ladders – a childish game, but one without any words. I let him win.