Plethora

It’s only been three days but already a Plethora of P words are Percolating up into consciousness. A plethora of words with so much Possibility: paradox, patience, petrified, power, place, passwords (don’t you HATE them? How many do you have and how do you remember which works with what?), presidents (now there’s a topic!), penguin, pork, pinkeye, pansies (in bloom now on my supermarket’s shelf) … and I have several pages of other P words waiting in the wings.

Plethora means “a superabundance, an excess.”

What a bounteous word! It calls up cornucopias and the mythical Pitcher that stays full no matter how much is Poured from it, the colors of spring, all the Plant and animal species that inhabit our Planet, the number of stars that used to glow from the sky when I was a kid camping out (back before light Pollution), the overpowering love a mother feels for her baby. The bottomless well of generosity I want to find in myself.

Plethora was the first special vocabulary word I recall learning as I Prepared for college entrance exams, and it was delicious because it sounded so grown up. We sprinkled it liberally in our conversations, along with apotheosis and nadir.