DETRITUS

**Lynn Hickernell** (0:02)
The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary contains over 200,000 words.
These words express the breadth and depth of human experience from the ordinary to the spectacular. Yet the average American adult only knows about one-tenth of this total number of words, and regularly uses only about half of those. This podcast is dedicated to the pursuit of using words better and using better words. This is The Good Words Podcast.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
Good Words Podcast.

**Lynn Hickernell** (0:52)
Salutations, logophiles. Welcome to another bonus episode of The Good Words Podcast with me, Lynn Hickernell. When I was assembling the episodes for the first series of this podcast, there were sometimes things that I had in mind to include, but for a variety of reasons, didn't make it into the finished edit. This situation brought to mind this episode's theme word.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:18)
Dytritus. Dytritus. Dytritus. Dytritus. Dytritus. Dytritus. Dytritus.

**Lynn Hickernell** (1:24)
Dytritus is a bit like a theme word from an earlier episode, Quagmire, in that both words originally referred to natural phenomena. Historically, Dytritus comes from the field of geology, where it meant small bits that remained after rock had eroded. Noted naturalist John Muir used the word this way in . In his book, The Yosemite, when he wrote about a violent storm that he observed.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:52)
And the winds, too, were singing in wild accord, playing on every tree and rock, surging against the huge brows and domes and outstanding battlements, deflected hither and thither, and broken into a thousand cascading, roaring currents in the canyons, and low, bass, drumming swirls in the hollows. And these, again, reacting on the clouds, eroded immense cavernous spaces in their gray depths and swept forward the resulting detritus in ragged trains like the moraines of glaciers.

**Lynn Hickernell** (2:37)
Like Quagmire, Overtime Detritus has also taken on a more metaphorical meaning. In contemporary usage, it often means any remnants or small bits that are left over. Used in this way, it typically has a negative connotation, and so is sometimes a synonym for trash. Listen to this passage from James Blish's science fiction story, The Thing in the Attic.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:05)
The Giants had returned to judge their handiwork, and the first of the people they would meet would be three outcasts, three condemned and degraded criminals, three jailbreakers, the worst possible detritus of the Attic world.

**Lynn Hickernell** (3:25)
Here, detritus is clearly used metaphorically, meaning something discarded, without value, or as I said earlier, trash. But as has been often said, one person's trash is another person's treasure. So I decided to take the detritus left over from making the first series of this podcast to create this bonus episode. It came from the internet.
Nick Offerman is an actor best known for his role in the TV program Parks and Recreation and also for his substantial beard and advocacy of woodworking and other handcrafts. I saw a meme with a quote attributed to him on social media and tracked down the quote to an interview he did with Men's Health magazine. It seemed very pertinent to the episode of this podcast on the word lacrimose. When asked what the last thing was that made him cry, Mr. Offerman responded, I cry with pretty great regularity. It's not entirely accurate to equate me with manliness. I stand for my principles and I work hard and I have good manners, but machismo is a double-sided coin. A lot of people think it requires behavior that can quickly veer into misogyny and things I consider indecent. We've been sold this weird John Wayne mentality that fistfights and violence are vital to being a man. I'd rather hug than punch. Crying at something that moves you to joy or sadness is just as manly as chopping down a tree or punching out a bad guy. To answer your question, I recently saw Alicia Keys perform live. I'd never seen her before and the sheer golden heavenly talent issuing from her and her singing instrument had both my wife and me in tears. What a gorgeous gift she has. Her voice is so great and I had no shame about crying. If you live your life openly with your emotions, that's a more manly stance than burying them.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:27)
My motto is hug before punch because I've learned that from history and from all the wise teachers that I've had that, you know, my dad said, look, if it seems like you're going to get in a fight with somebody, see if you can get to where you shake their hand.

**SPEAKER_2** (5:45)
The Good Words Podcast.

**Lynn Hickernell** (5:47)
I loved what Nick Offerman had to say about crying and about his understanding of what makes someone manly. Another actor with something to say on this topic is Dwayne Johnson. He is a very large, physically imposing person who played professional football and wrestled under the name The Rock. He has appeared in many movies and television programs, but my favorite of his roles is the voice of Maui in Moana.