deipnosophist - noun - person adept at dining or dinner table conversation
Now here's a relevant word for you. It's impossible to spell and hard to get out of your mouth (especially if you happen to be eating at that dinner table), but one worthy of adding to the ole vocabulary anyway. Deipnosophist derives from the Greek "deipnon," meaning "meal" and "sophistes," or "wise man."
As COVID is winding down (or at least the fear of contracting it is), more and more people are starting to dine out. Most are preferring to sit outdoors over indoors, but all are anxious to reconnect socially. And why not over dinner? However since they have not been out of the house for a long time, skills at confabulating may need to be fine-tuned.
If you feel as though you are a member of the aforementioned club of insecure diners, in order to get back to becoming your best deipnosophist, you may have to practice coming up with just the right conversation starters. Why not go back to the ones that worked in the past? For instance, you can always mention the weather, your dog's newfound, astonishing abilities, your latest windfall, earned or apportioned from the government, etc. But these won't be sufficient to place you in the category of deipnosophist. You might have to resort to Googling topics of current interest like most.
Or you can do what I resort to doing: Allow the other person to do the talking. Listening is passive, yes, but so much easier. You can sit back, savor every morsel of that $25 hamburger and be the person skilled at dining and not conversation. And you would still be classified as a deipnosophist, just the first part of the definition but not the last.
Happy Hump Day to all!
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