Can We Coin a New Word?

One of the best gifts my Dad ever shared with me is a delight in the English language. I just love words and their shades of meaning. I was one of those weird kids who actually liked spelling and vocabulary quizzes.

One of my all time favorite gifts from my husband, on our 11th wedding anniversary, was a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. (It said he understood me.) I've really enjoyed having this gigunda reference book in my very own home all these years.

I know, gigunda is not a real word. But it works. Made up words often work better than any of the words in that fat Webster's.

Like a word I heard a couple of weeks ago.

Procrastifectionist.

Isn't that a GREAT word?!! Fit my condition to a tee. It's helpful to finally have a name for a mindset that impedes my progress. Here's my proposed dictionary entry:

pro cras ti fec' tion ist, n. [L. from pro, forward, crastinus, belonging to the morrow, and perficere, to finish] a person who believes that perfection can and should be attained in this life, and lacking sufficient time to complete a task to perfection, puts off doing said task until tomorrow.

I could flesh out a procrastifectionist's profile here, but I think you get the idea. I have only recently identified perfectionism as the real culprit lurking at the root of some of my most self-defeating behaviors. In many areas of my life it can be found masquerading as excellence, but is actually, in fact, my own compulsion toward an emotional high that "perfection" delivers.

But that's a topic for another post. Stay tuned.