Idiopathic

Idiopathic is an immensely useful word meaning that you've got no idea what the hell is happening. It's a medical term and is there to allow bewildered doctors to conceal their bewilderment. Technically it means of an unknown or obscure cause. So when you turn up at the clinic and explain to the doctor that your pulse is down your glands are up and your right foot's fallen off, rather than saying 'Blimey, I'm flummoxed' the doctor can smile wisely and say 'Hmm, how idiopathic.'

So never again, dear reader! Never again need you admit that you don't understand something. Idiopathy can maintain you in intellectual comfort forever. Failed guesses, bankruptcies, freak election results and unsuccessful seductions can all be dismissed as idiopathic.

You might even add in the word exucontian, meaning out of nothing. It's a theological word, but along with idiopathic is useful for explaining car crashes to the police.

I only know of idiopathic because a doctor friend of mine once told me that I had a strange dark patch on my eyeball. He examined my other eye and found it there too. We worried and fretted about it for a few minutes before he calmly concluded that I had idiopathic eyes and left it at that. I started to feel Miltonic and Homeric and considered morosely that my light was spent. Later I remembered that I wear contact lenses.

Idiopathic