Grammar Moses: Let's have a Scrabble-dictionary convo about fauxhawks

It's been many years since I've played Scrabble.

"Hey, do you feel like beating the pants off me at Scrabble?" is not generally something I'm asked by friends or family members. I'm not sure why.

Games of chance, mixed with strategy, better describes our field of play.

I remember perhaps the last time my sister and I engaged in battle I played the word "ka."

It was disputed. This was decades ago. We didn't have a Scrabble dictionary, and we didn't have Google, either.

Turns out, Jenny, "ka" IS in the Scrabble dictionary. I know, because in doing some research I looked it up.

Nanny-nanny-foo-foo!

I apologize for my lapse into middle school taunting. Sort of.

The reason I bring up Scrabble is because, like Merriam-Webster's other dictionaries, its Scrabble dictionary is updated regularly.

That's one good way to keep lexicographers - look it up in a dictionary - employed. But it's also a good way to help us translate what our kids and grandkids are saying to us.

To a Scrabble maven, there is something holy about the Scrabble dictionary. It is the final word; it settles all arguments.

Merriam-Webster has added about 500 words to its latest Scrabble companion.

I know and have employed many of the small sample M-W provided in a news release.

Because "conversation" is something younger people cannot have without copious contractions, "convo" is now a legal Scrabble word.

The same applies to "sitch."

As in, "What's the sitch, Tommy, are you gonna light this party up or what?"

Forgive me if that question rings unnatural. It came from the mind of a sexagenarian.

To "dox" someone is to provide perfect strangers all sorts of personal information (documents) about someone.

One I didn't know, however, was "zedonk."

While I discovered a decidedly raunchy definition, I'm sure the one Scrabble embraces is the hybrid offspring of a male zebra and a female donkey.

Here is a question for you zoologists out there: Would the product of a female zebra and a male donkey be different?

The addition I can't believe hasn't been in the Scrabble dictionary for decades is "fauxhawk."

Back in the late 1980s, my brother was a fan of punk music. He wanted to look the part.

If memory serves, Joe Strummer of The Clash had given himself a mohawk - the crazy cousin to the less-committed fauxhawk.

While my brother has lost much of it since, back then he had a luxuriant head of dark curly hair.

Once, while he was in college, he begged me to shave his head - on the sides only.

What remained, with curls stretched straight, would have been about 8 inches tall.

I argued he should cut the sides short, packing them close to his skull with whatever hair goo was available, and leave the dorsal strip long. I might have even called it a "fauxhawk" then. I'm not certain. But I've been using the term since about that time.

He would have no such thing.

"If you don't do it, I'll do it myself," he told me.

I was smart enough to know that my contribution to this endeavor would not score any points with my parents, so I demurred.

He and his buddy ended up trading full, scraggly mohawks anyway.

• By the way, Jenny, "ka" in ancient Egypt was the spiritual part of a person or a god that survived with the soul after death and that lived on in a statue.

Write - and play - carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at grammar mosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/ baumannjim.