Finding Your Mojo

OK, I am word obsessed.  Guilty as charged.

But I find that more and more I'm almost put off by the sometimes arch intellectualism of respected word freaks like William Safire, the former presidential speechwriter and long-time syndicated political columnist for the New York Times.  He's a regular contributor to the "On Language" column that appears in the Sunday Times. "On Language" discusses popular etymology and other language-related topics, especially new and unusual usages.  When you read it and discuss it you feel, well, serious about words and language.

But these days, I'm leaning towards spending way too much time on urbandictionary.com, looking up words, phrases, locations, just to see what definition they've been given.  Urbandictionary is a bit like wikipedia in that its users are the source of the definitions, but as you'll quickly learn there is no editing of any significance going on, so they can be crude, lewd, childish.  This is definitely not William Safire territory, although I believe he would find it amusing.

Urbandictionary is one of the best examples of English as a constantly evolving language.  It's the weirded out version of the Oxford English Dictionary (which occupies a place of reverence at the other extreme end of my word-obsession continuum), known to aficionados as the OED.

According to urbandictionary.com, my mojo has a lot to do with words. It's part of my essence, my style.  If I hadn't looked mojo up there, I'd be stuck with the Merriam Webster definition which is about magic spells and special skills.  Close, but not quite there.

Look up your college on urbandictionary.com.  You may be amused.  Look up the company you work for.  See how people describe it.  Could be illuminating. 

See if the person writing the definition has nailed your company's mojo. If not, add a definition of your own.