Small Victories

   I am a writer. As posh as that sounds, let me be the first to say that I am not a literary genius. Yes, I have a basic grasp of vocabulary and grammar, but I don't go out of my way to pepper my everyday conversations with five dollar words. I can't afford them.
   Every so often, I come across a concept that I can't articulate to save my life. Five dollar word users would say I suffer from a mild form of anomic aphasia. I say I suffer a lack of language data in my Jeopardy! cortex: the part of the brain that houses random and seemingly usless trivia. This happened to me today.
   I needed a descriptive for a person who goes by a single name, for example: Madonna, Prince, Cher, etc. I was about to Google it, when all of the Latin that I never took suddenly came back to me and my brain said, "Hey, how about mononym?" It sounded good, so I typed it into Word and immediately, a little red squiggle appeared. So I went back to plan A and Googled, "what is the term for a person who is known by one name?"
  "It is mononymous, meaning, a person who is known by a mononym," Google answered in the form of a Wikipedia page. I wanted to fist pump right then and there, but Wikipedia... Let's get a second opinion, shall we?
   Several respected sources later, it turns out that mononym is the word I was looking for. I had it right! I'm smarter than Office 2010! Commence with the "Yeah baby!"s and fist pumping like I'm the queen of etymology.
   Like I said, small victories.