Smoothy

Today’s word appeared in the comments column for the New York Times article by Pam Belluck headlined on the web “Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid” and in the October 17th print edition “Solution to Long Covid Mystery May Be in the Gut, a Study Says.”

The commenter, whose handle and locale are Up for Debate and Mountain West, respectively, extols the virtues of three kinds of seeds: flax, chia, and hemp (non-THC). 

Up for Debate writes, on October 16:

For what it’s worth after experiencing COVID I had symptoms that track with low serotonin. 

These symptoms improved remarkably after a hippy neigbor* gave me some seeds to put in my smoothy. . . .

The spelling in the comment brought to mind my mother’s texts.*

I read smoothy and suddenly understood some of my aversion to the word foodie. The -ie grates on me. 

Smoothy is so much more visually palatable than smoothie. 

Smoothy is a mogul that even intermediate skiiers can handle. It’s water coursing over rocks in a creek during snowmelt season. It’s bubbly and curved — soft as glass, as TVZ might say. It’s a bit like the way challah dough resembles a baby’s tushy. Somehow it doesn’t seem to describe anything except itself, even though it is a bona fide variant spelling. 

I think of it as a word like cooky, seemingly fit for very young readers who pat the bunny and know how to say good night to mittens and hairbrushes until the moment when it’s their turn to write cookie. 

Thank you, Up for Debate in the Mountain West.  

 

* A very entertaining texter, my mother was. Ten years ago this November 21st, after some pomegranate and probably some tea, she died while sleeping. It was sad for me. She had phoned me at work that afternoon to say she had something important to tell me. I sometimes wonder how it was she happened to die that particular night.

Neigbor is her kind of typo.