Cunctipotent

a vocab word that doesn’t mean what you think it might.

With bonus vocab word: strabismus! Yay!

I found this new (to me) word on my Twitter feed just before the pandemic hit, in a period of much frustration and transition in my personal and professional life. This, like popination and many of my other more interesting Vocab Words o’th’Week, is thanks to stellar knowledge garden QI (Quite Interesting), on their platform-formerly-known-as Twitter feed. By the way, ever watch QI when Stephen Fry was the host? Bless. Total sexy brain food. Pretty sure many eps are still on the y00bTüb, but I shan’t bother to go look. I’ve got a cool word to discuss, after all. 

So. I’m now officially in love with this glorious word. It is now my boyfriend. What does it mean? Glad you asked. Apparently it’s a synonym for omnipotent. Why not just use omnipotent instead? Because CUNCTIPOTENT, please! Why would you ever question such a thing? Seriously. See yourself out, you cuncts.

I’m a pretty well-read human, and a well educated, as well as being subject to the drudgery of humanities adjunct professorship for a plural number of decades now. Because of all this, it’s pretty rare that I come across a word that’s completely new to me. Last time I did, it was a few years ago when I used a coupon to go get my eyes checked for the first time since I was a kid. I learned that what I’ve always called a lazy or wandering eye isn’t that at all, but a condition called strabismus. This word filled me with delight (as all new words do), not only because it was a new word to me, but one that specifically names a peculiar condition of mine, a condition which thankfully doesn’t affect my excellent eyesight but only makes me look funny and also renders me incapable of seeing the images manifest in Magic Eye posters. Remember those?

Strabismus

It’s a condition where one of the eyes goes too far in (esotropia) or too far out (exotropia), basically, it makes a person not binocular. It can affect eyesight but I don’t seem to have any of the more serious eyesight problems, like double vision or vision loss. I do have some weird depth perception issues, though. Basically, it’s a thing that’s common in children and if it goes on into adulthood, there’s not really much that can be done about it, other than special glasses to correct double vision (which I don’t need) or surgery on the slacking ocular muscle in question (which, no thank you).

So I don’t have major issues with my eyesight, but I have had rather a complex about my looks growing up. See, I’m on the esotropic side of things, which gives me an odd cross-eyed look, which… Well I’ve never been a pretty girl, and this particular characteristic hasn’t helped any.* It’s funny; even the Temple Health website, all sciencey and stuff, mentions self esteem issues as one of the major problems with adult strabismus, which I found interesting and also heartening.   

*Once, a reviewer in a show I was in at college, not only compared my comedic maid character to Carol Burnett, but described me as a “cross-eyed cutie.” I was never sure how to take that, though his review of my acting and clowning prowess praised me highly. I dunno.

Direct eye contact is sometimes impossible for me, though it might seem direct to me—I can always tell when a student raises a hand to answer a question and I call on them and they look behind themselves, not knowing I’m looking at them. Which is a little embarrassing. And headshots are a particular challenge for me, too: I’ve discovered that if I look away and then glance at the camera and they take it right then? It can work. Or if I angle my face a little to favor the wonky eye, that looks fine too, though it’s not really what you should do for a theatrical headshot. Those normally do need to be straight on, for reasons. But I don’t audition much these days, and not formally for people who don’t know me and would use a headshot to cast me anyway.

Like I said though, my eyesight is fine, but do I have problems with depth perception? Hard to say, but yeah I’m pretty sure I do. I do famously suck at games that involve aim, like pool or ping pong. And I’ve never but never been able to see Magic Eye illusions (as I’ve mentioned above), and I’m convinced it’s because my eyes don’t point in the same direction. Maybe I shouldn’t regularly be adding 4 feet of steel blade at the end of my arm, but ehhhh I’m sure it’s fine. It’s probably fine. What could go wrong, swordfighting with a lack of depth perception? I mean, it’s been fine so far…

If I turn my face more ¾ to the camera than straight on, the strabismus isn’t as visible. But you can see it pretty clearly here in this headshot. One thing about this, that made me feel oddly old: when the photog was processing these pictures, she asked if I wanted her to correct the eyes, and I was like, what? Oh! No, don’t correct it, I told her, but it threw me for a loop. Like, you can just get rid of that? Wow. But this is my theatre headshot and I’d hate to be deceptive in an audition by sending a director a corrected pic and then showing up with a wonky uncastable eye. But. Weird, huh?

I, Potent Cunct

But! Cunctipotent delights me because…well. I mean. Do I really need to explain? I haven’t even bothered to go further into looking this word up, because I don’t want to risk disappointment. Words are a palpable pleasure to me, almost a visceral one, and new words (being so rare to me) are that much more so.

I am, it’s true, learning some new turns of phrase, sponging as I am all the business knowledge I can from my partner, as I begin attempts at moving my body language and public speaking expertise into the business world, and so am getting to know the language of its denizens. But that’s not really new words. It’s more like jargon. It’s words I already know used in fresh (to me) ways. Turns of phrase like “top-of-mind,” “onboarding,” or “actionable” aren’t really another language, but a different poetic arrangement of familiar language, or an adaptation of common English words to suit a more specific meaning. It’s funny—each time I have another bit of biz jargon explained to me, it strikes me how vivid with imagery the corporate workplace dialect is. Also abbreviations and compound words.

(I’ve talked about Gretchen McCulloch’s book Because Internet before, too—it’s focused on online language, how texting and ‘speaking’ online is a new dialect in itself, and how it has evolved in tandem with the tech. But that’s a whole ‘nother article.) 

Not being cunctipotent myself, I’m learning new things much more often these days. New academic year, transition of career, new place in the state and the world, new Substack, new me. Well, old me, reawakening, more like. Forming the familiar into new poetic patterns.

Like a new word.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: this post, in a very much more abbreviated version, appeared on a pen-named blog of mine back in 2019, the same day as that QI Tweet, as a matter of fact. I have expanded and revised and otherwise performed radical surgery on it since then. Lots has changed in my world since January of 2019, but not my strabismus, and I still don’t need reading glasses, much to the jealous chagrin of my partner. Life is indeed quite different here on the other side of COVID, though, isn’t it, and it’s so funny to read the original and think about how none of us (at least where I live) really knew what was on the horizon, how crazy it would get in the span of only a year.

But then, you can’t blame us. None of us were cunctipotent.