It's happened to most people. You encounter an unfamiliar word in a book, guess at the meaning and move on. OK occasionally for a reader (although a missed opportunity) but a disaster for anyone in the "creative business" of crafting words.
According to New Zealand poet and educator Bill Manhire (Mutes and Earthquakes. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1997), a writer's words are actually "instruments of exploration, part of the actual process of discovery". Language is an important part of your voice, "the unmistakable, distinctive sound that a writer makes on the page". It's worth reading widely, and choosing words carefully, considering their etymology or origins, modern usage and likely impact.
Creative Expression and Unpleasant Mental States
An example of a word that makes readers sit up and take notice is "fantods", as in "howling fantods". David Foster Wallace uses the expression in his masterpiece Infinite Jest (Brown & Company, 1996) in this way: "There'd been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he'd refused to go to, as a child. Roaches gave him the howling fantods". Later in the novel, character Remy Marathe defines fantods as "fear, confusion, standing hair".
Wallace was known for unusual use of language and, given that he mentions "the fantods" so frequently they appear to be part of the ironic intent of Infinite Jest, some readers suspect he made the word up.
In fact, while the origins are unclear, Chambers Dictionary has a definition for fantod or fantad, "a fidgety, fussy person, especially a ship's officer". The Oxford English Dictionary similarly describes the plural word, which seems to have appeared first in the mid-19th century, as "a state of fidgetiness, uneasiness, or unreasonableness... nervous depression or apprehension, the fidgets, 'the creeps'."
Fantods appear also in Mark Twain's work and in that of Thomas Pynchon: "...it was always easy, in open and lonely places, to be visited by Panic wilderness fear, but these are the urban fantods here, that come to get you when you are lost or isolated inside the way time is passing". (Gravity's Rainbow. New York: Viking Press, 1973). David Cowart describes Pynchon himself as a "fantod, whose mouth gestures towards a smile and whose mild eyes gaze noncommittally into the void of those who stare at him". (Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion. Carbondale: Southern University Press, 1980).
Your Character and the Screaming Meemies
So as a writer, when would you gift your emotionally fragile character with the "howling fantods" instead of, for example, the "screaming meemies?"
Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the "screaming meemies" simply as "extreme nervous tension". The word is of more recent origin than "fantods", having first been used as a name for German shells in the First World War, and has maintained its military connection (since the Second World War describing noisy army rockets launched in groups from trucks).
Despite (or perhaps because of) its traceable origins, the "screaming meemies" expression seems now to be more in common than in literary use. For example, Phil Harris uses it to refer to media and commentators on the global economic crisis in his article Wall Street: Land of the Screaming Meemies. The words are more frequently used to refer to people than is "fantod" (characters tend to "have" the fantods), and have associated with them a sense of noise (more than fidgety, nervous movement).
Why Language Matters
Language used imprecisely can prevent a writer from communicating, which unless you are writing in a diary is likely to be your primary objective. Worse, it can be extremely annoying for the reader. The effect is similar to a child just learning to use words and getting some of them wrong. This can be amusing, but only if it is done on purpose. Here is an example from Infinite Jest:
Hal: ""Their quarry. The object of their being out there".
Stice: "Damn straight, their raisin-debt and what have you..."
So, as you develop your craft of writing, it's worth thinking carefully about the building blocks of the message: the words and expressions that express your creative voice.
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