Today in my American literature class I used these words and terms while discussing The Great Gatsby:

abscond: Tom and Daisy were planning to abscond.

jilt: Daisy jilted Gatsby.

Dear John letter: You know, she wrote him a Dear John letter.

My students were puzzled.

Finally, one of them asked me, “Why do you use words like that?”

Because the words come into my mind. So that you can stretch your mind a little. Because they’re the right words for what I want to say.

However, I had to admit that even I didn’t know, when I read from the last paragraphs of the book, what the word “orgiastic” meant. The kids and I agreed that it sounds like “orgy”, but that meaning doesn’t seem to fit the sentence. I’m sure Fitzgerald used the word because it came into his mind and it was the right word for what he wanted to say. I guess it’s time for some vocabulary-stretching.

Orgiastic does mean “debauched, dissolute, and depraved.” Now all I have to do is understand that meaning in the context. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
What did Gatsby believe in?

Wow, it turns out that there’s a whole discussion of this word in the ending paragraphs of The Great Gatsby and of what Fitzgerald meant to write and what word he meant to use.

That’s what I like about books and words; when you start out on a simple Word Road, you never know where you’ll end up.