COLUMN: Chicken at church, 'awesomesauce' new words

The age-old question is: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

But at Stillwater Free Lutheran Church near Kalispell, parishioners have been asking a different question this summer: “Why is the chicken coming to church?”

A friendly black hen has been faithfully attending Sunday morning worship services all summer long, longtime church member John McGrew reported to the Inter Lake.

Stillwater Free Lutheran puts up a big outdoor tent where services are held during the summer months, and like clockwork the chummy chicken has attended church every Sunday to wander among the worshipers.

“I’ve nicknamed him The Christian Chicken,” McGrew said.

The hen apparently is owned by folks who live next door to the country church, located in the West Valley area along, quite appropriately, Church Drive. McGrew astutely pointed out that the  reason the chicken keeps coming to church probably has more to do with toddlers dropping Cheerios and other bits of snacks on the ground than it does with a wandering hen’s need to hear the Gospel.

McGrew is trying to get a photograph of The Christian Chicken, but when he brought his camera to church last Sunday the hen was mysteriously absent. Could it be the hen has become Sunday dinner instead?

I suspect “fowl” play.

Oxford Dictionaries has just released its latest list of new words that have been added to the dictionary, and you’ll be either pleased or horrified to learn that “brain fart,” “beer-o-clock” and “butt dial” are now officially part of the English language.

Brain fart, a temporary mental lapse, has been around for a while, as has beer-o-clock, which refers to the appropriate time of day to start chugging a cold one. And butt dial, of course, is the term for inadvertently calling someone on a cellphone in your back pocket.

I’m always intrigued by the words or phrases that make the list.

“Awesomesauce,” which means excellent, is a word I heard recently during a TV commercial. It made the list. So did cupcakery, a bakery that specializes in cupcakes.

 According to Oxford University Press, these new terms have been judged as “most significant and likely to stand the test of time.” So if you want to be on the cutting edge of our language, take note of these gems:

•  Hangry — (adjective) bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.
•  Fat-shame — (verb) to cause someone who is judged to be fat or overweight to feel humiliated by mocking or criticizing their size.
•  Manspreading — (noun) the practice of a man, especially one traveling on public transportation, to sit with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on adjacent seats.
•  Rando — (noun) a person one does not know, especially one regarded as odd, suspicious, or engaging in socially inappropriate behavior.
•  Swatting — (noun) the action or practice of making a hoax call to the emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.

After writing this column, I’m feeling very “al desko.” That’s the new word for overworked!

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.