the words

German has a word for to forget. So I don't know why this happens, perhaps it's colloquial, or has to do with usage rather than literal meaning. But it's happened to me several times where I'm talking with someone and they can't think how to say what they want to say, and they pause, and then tell me, "I miss the words."

I want to say, I miss them too! Repugnant, chartreuse, cataclysmic, trickling, dross, unwieldy, dregs, disconsolate, ampersand, elusive, prognosticate, hyperbole, circumscribed, pastoral, antediluvian, prelapsarian, heteronormative, concupiscent, seredipitous. I'm off on one iceberg, they're off on another, and we are both slowly melting.

I miss the words.