The Power of Words

Today, as I was sitting in the lounge catching up on my emails, a girl turned to me and asked the following question:

"Do you know what Soup Con means?"

I stared blankly for an instant.

"Soup... Con...?" I asked. My mind was filled with images of giant convention halls filled with various soup vendors' booths. People dressed up in soup-related costumes, as ladles, even as giant cans of soup. Campbells handing out tiny cups with free samples of their most popular flavor - tomato, of course. In another room, soup-related games, bobbing for dumplings in chicken stock, trading rare soup can labels. In a smaller meeting room, a panel on the controversy of boxed versus canned soup; wet soup versus dehydrated soup.

All this and more flashed before my eyes as I grinned weakly with bewilderment. The girl looked down at her homework and spelled out:

"S-O-U-P-C-O-N. Soup Con. What does it mean?"

"Ohhhhh," I said, fighting back laughter, "soupçon, the verb is soupçonner. It means to suspect someone; to be suspicious. So a 'soup-sssson' is a suspicion."

She thanked me and went back to her work. Actually, maybe she didn't thank me. I don't know, I was too busy imagining this Soup Con.

For those of you who don't know, the cedilla (the little tail on the c that looks like this: ç) turns a c into the soft S sound instead of the hard K sound. Clearly, this girl had not remarked the cedilla.

If you'll excuse me, I have a Convention to plan. I will dress up as a spork. What will you be?