Rigmarole

“What is this rigmarole?” my mom said.
I didn’t know what a rigmarole was, but I knew from the tone of her voice that it was not good.  

Recently I found myself writing that word, pulled from somewhere in the depths of memory.  I was uncertain still, exactly what it meant but it felt like the right word for the sentence.  Just to be certain, I typed it into the Google search box.   

rig·ma·role (rĭg′mə-rōl′) also rig·a·ma·role (-ə-mə-rōl′)

n.

1. Confused, rambling, or incoherent discourse; nonsense.

2. A complicated, petty set of procedures.

That was exactly what I was trying to say!  Much of my vocabulary was learned in this fashion, by word usage.  I couldn’t give you the dictionary definition, but I knew what it meant.  I knew how to use it and when, but words are more than that.  Words have a sensual quality and a connotation.  They paint pictures that a different word would not.  I cannot hear or use the word rigmarole without it conjuring in me the feeling my mother expressed when she used it that day many years ago.  Now that’s clarity and it’s power.  

I’ve taken my share of standardized tests over the years and I never understood the vocabulary sections - the antonym this and the which pair that.  I could memorize the definitions of words on an SAT or GRE or CDF word list and answer mostly correctly what the test makers were looking for but that didn’t mean I could use those words in sentences.  What were they trying to measure anyway?