STEPHANIE TOPACIO LONG
F. Scott Fitzgerald gave us a
lot over the course of his life and even beyond, including great literature
(obviously), fabulous heroines we seek to emulate, a realistic portrayal of
mental illness, and, indirectly, another chance to get a look at Leonardo
DiCaprio’s crying face. One of the celebrated author’s lesser known
contributions, however, is his advocacy for the importance of a very special
verb — one that you need to start using immediately, if you haven’t already.
It’s so simple that I’m still wondering why I didn’t think to use it sooner: to
cocktail. Genius.
Fitzgerald recognized how
essential this use of the word was, which frankly, isn’t surprising,
considering how near and dear to him the topic of alcohol was. In a letter to
Blanche Knopf, the wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf, the Great Gatsby author
gave the noun-turned-verb its due by conjugating it out for her.
“As ‘cocktail,’ so I gather,
has become a verb, it ought to be conjugated at least once,” he wrote. He
proceeded to list all of its forms, and lucky for us, it’s not an irregular
verb with tricky conjugations. Nonetheless, Fitzgerald gets really deep into
the grammar of it. Gold star if you can rattle off all of these verb forms off
the top of your head.
Present: I cocktail, thou/you
cocktail, it cocktails, we cocktail, you cocktail, they cocktail.
Imperfect: I was cocktailing.
Perfect/past definite: I
cocktailed.
Past perfect: I have
cocktailed.
Conditional: I might have
cocktailed.
Pluperfect: I had cocktailed.
Subjunctive: I would have
cocktailed.
Voluntary subjunctive: I should
have cocktailed.
Preterite: I did cocktail.
Imperative: Cocktail!
Interrogative: Cocktailest
thou?
Subjunctive conditional: I
would have had to have cocktailed.
Conditional subjunctive: I
ought have had to have cocktailed.
Participle: Cocktailing
If I’d have had to have
conjugated these verbs without Fitzgerald’s help, I would have had to have
cocktailed. And now that I’m done, I will cocktail.
