Wordly wise

Re “Coming to terms,” Opinion, Sept. 30

Steven Pinker’s insightful and funny essay reminded me that for every new word that seems to pop up like a mushroom in the basement, others die aborning no matter how hard journalists try. In the ‘70s, there was a semi-serious attempt to coin the word for an unmarried romantic partner as “posslq” (pronounced possel que), an acronym taken from tax forms for “person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.” I even got a Valentine’s Day card that read, “If I whisper I love you, will you be my posslq?” It never caught on, thank goodness.

Jack Shakely

Rancho Mirage