My wife, Mary, asked me the other day if I knew the definition of the word "expurgated." I did know, but it's how I knew that struck me as funny. I remembered hearing the word several years earlier in a Monty Python sketch.
It's from the bookshop sketch. When Mary said the word, my mind flashed immediately to Eric Idle asking John Cleese for a copy of Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds. "The expurgated version," he says. "The one without the gannet." From that I was able to parse out that expurgated means "edited."
Expurgated actually means amended to remove objectionable phrases. The Pentagon calls it "redacting."
Memory sometimes uses unusual markers to help us recall bits of information. It's occasionally auditory in my case. The other day during an on-air contest I was asked what century World War I was in. I said correctly that it was the 20th after hearing in my head Bill Clinton's voice, talking about "Building that bridge to the 21st century."
Sometimes it's the sound of the word itself that helps us remember. Everybody knows hasenpfeffer is a dish made with rabbit meat, thanks to a Bug Bunny cartoon.
If only I could remember where I left the remote...
Here's a version of the bookshop sketch. And below that, Bugs Bunny's hasenpfeffer episode. Enjoy
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