Doesn’t that word seem strange to anyone else? Observative. It’s like a cross between ‘conservative’ and ‘observant’. My browser is underlining it in red, telling me it’s misspelled even though I know it’s not. It’s a word that’s been annoying me for about a week now, because it’s just so odd.

Let me start from the beginning. Last Sunday, I attended a family dinner party and I was having a conversation with my cousin in which he said, “I noticed because I’m very observative.” I gave him a funny look. “Don’t you mean ‘observant’?” I asked. The word just didn’t seem to fit in the sentence.

He shook his head and I proceeded to tell him that ‘observative’ wasn’t a word. I, being the English major, would know if such a terrible word existed. He adamantly disagreed with me and told me that it really was a word, pulling out his phone and googling it to prove me wrong.

He was right. ‘Observative’, as awkward as it sounds to my ears, really is a word. That doesn’t mean that I’ll ever use it, let alone let it fall from my lips.  It’s just too weird and I don’t feel like it works in any sentence. ‘Observant’ sounds so much better, makes so much more sense.

I don’t know why that word sounds so odd to me. Is it really just me? Maybe it’s just one of those words that I don’t hear often enough to actually recognize as a word.

Whatever the reason is for my brain to want to reject that word, I’d love to know what it is.