With potent, flowery words speak I,
Of something common, vulgar, dry;
I weave webs of pedantic prose,
In effort to befuddle those,
Who think I wile time away,
In lofty things, above all day
The common kind that linger where
Monadic beings live and fare;
Practical I may not be,
But life, it seems, is full of me!

This is a famous riddle ? If you say so.

Anyway I took my clues from the word "monadic" (a single unit or entity) , as for example a monosyllabic word,  being described in the riddle in very ornate language, and "life, it seems, is full of me!"

What "LIFE" is literally full of, is "IF"

So I am guessing that the monosyllabic hypothetical word "IF" is what is being described.

Hypotheticals are commonly derided as impractical. How many times have we heard politicians say "Well, I'm not going to try to answer a hypothetical question" ?

But life is full of "if", both literally and figuratively.

So that's my guess: IF  

 

 

Edited on September 8, 2006, 11:17 am

Posted by Penny on 2006-09-08 11:14:55