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Style Conversational Week: Working out ‘gymgerly’

The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest, results and cartoon

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Bob Staake's first draft to illustrate the neologism “gymgerly,” referring to the abundance of caution used by people returning to the newly reopened gym.

It was certainly eye-catching, drawing the reader into the picture.

I’d sent The Style Invitational’s almost-forever illustrator, Bob Staake, the three neologisms that Loser Duncan Stevens had supplied for the contest he suggested and became Week 1391, for neologisms without a C, O, V, I or D (though Duncan had slyly defined all three in terms of the pandemic). It seemed to me that “gymgerly” — how one handles the equipment at the newly reopened Planet Fitness — lent itself most to a cartoon, and Bob agreed, sending me the sketch above.