I have no idea where it came from. It’s been part of my vocabulary for years. In fact, I haven’t even thought about it being there, in the sense of identifying it. It wasn’t until I was sending an email to my daughter, responding to a question she had for me. I started to write “That’s just hunky-dory.” I realized I had absolutely no idea how to spell it, having never seen it in writing before.
Hunky-dory is an oral term, not a written one … at least from my perspective. There are a bunch of them: “Okey-Dokey, Razzmatazz, Eenie/Meenie/Miney/Moe” and so on. Some of them come from child-talk; others are right at home in adult conversation. As I said, they get used without a lot of consciousness. They just slip off the end of the tongue at appropriate moments.
I was surprised when I went to Dictionary.com to discover that hunky-dory can mean anything from “satisfactory” to “a street known for prostitution in Hong Kong.” I think I’d better be careful how I use it after this.
That’s what learning does for me: it sometimes ruins something for me which has been just fine in my ignorance. Learning the truth about it spoils it and makes it more dangerous. Ever since I was a kid there have been those moments when I have made a discovery, only to find that I wished that I hadn’t made it. It was so much more fun before. Knowing about the significance of it makes it harder.
I don’t really mean to glorify ignorance. I can’t think of one legitimate reason to choose ignorance over intelligence. So my musings about hunky-dory don’t really count for much. It shocks me to discover, however, that there are people who embrace ignorance and do everything they can to avoid intelligence. Even when presented with the truth about something they will reject it, choosing rather to embrace “the way we’ve always done it.”
Some people might call that being “conservative.” That’s not fair to true conservatism. In reality what I am describing is more along the lines of being reactionary. That is defined as being ultra-conservative and inclined to want to go back to “the good old days.” You and I both know that you can’t recreate the good old days and they may never have occurred. It just seems that way.
Well, I’ve drifted again. I started out talking about hunky-dory, a much more positive theme. I’ll bet anything I sound like a dork when I say it out loud. People just don’t talk that way anymore. It’s a colloquial phrase, not so much tied to a region of the country as to an era of time.
In any case, my daughter got the message. She’s heard me say it enough. I warned her to beware: it may just show up in our multi-year, on-going Scrabble championship.
Graphic credit: lighttape.com
