AJR Asks   

What words or phrases are you most proud of working into a story?

What words or phrases are you most proud of working into a story?

Lisa DePaulo, freelance writer and former contributing editor for George magazine
"When Larry King was marrying all these wives, I called him a 'serial husband.' I thought that was great, but now everybody's using it so it's not as funny... But I still smile every time I see it."

Dave Barry, author and syndicated columnist at the Miami Herald
"The names of imaginary rock bands, including The Flaming Salmonella Units, The Excessive Deer Doots, The Rival Bat Dung Gatherers, The Fecal Pellets, The Wood Tick Snorkels, Heave, Squatting Turnips, The Bones of Contention, Pinot Noir and his Nuances of Toast...The Flaming Booty Moths, Earl Piedmont and the Diphthongs, Rodent Passion, Jimmy Music and The Stomach Contents, The Gastric Contents, and, of course, Crotch."

Anne Hull, national reporter, St. Petersburg Times
"Last year, I followed the rookie season of Josh Hamilton, professional baseball's top draft pick, who at 18 signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for almost $4 million. [I wrote that] his cheekbones were Wheaties-box perfect, his hair lamby and shorn... The word 'lamby' doesn't appear in the English dictionary, but it appeared in my head, which was good enough for my editor, after a discussion about sheep, wool, clippers, the promise of youth and summer haircuts."

Ricky Young, transportation reporter, Denver Post
"I tried three times when I was at the Orange County Register to get the word 'kerflooey' into a story. It was barely a word. That's probably why it got replaced the first two times by words like awry. I did finally get it in, though. It was deep in a feature story. I guess they have less stringent rules about dictionary definable words."

Jacquelyn Mitchard, syndicated columnist and author
"Many years ago, I was writing a sort of tongue-in-cheek essay about an argument my husband and I had while standing on our boat in the middle of a lake while the boat was falling apart...and at one point I quoted him as saying, 'Shut up, he explained.' And I thought, of course, that everyone...would know that that was quoting Ring Lardner.... But, of course, nobody did, and it went into the story. And people came up, much to my chagrin and embarrassment, complimenting me all day on what a genius with words I was for ripping off the great master."

Joel Achenbach, Washington Post columnist and author
"I have a hard-and-fast rule to use the word 'prelapsarian' whenever possible. But I have just as strict a policy, in the other direction, on the word 'inchoate.' My feeling is that inchoate is seriously, screamingly pretentious, whereas prelapsarian is more gothically, archly, wryly pretentious.... You only get one use of inchoate per career... Someone here has six inchoates in the database, surely the record in this hemisphere."

Compiled by Kimberly Marselas