#1176 Writestat

I got a new household item during the recent cold snap. It was a humidifier. Really cold air makes it really dry and really dry turns my skin to really easily-ripped parchment.
I figured I’d recover the costs of the humidifier in the savings on finger band-aids in no time.
As I was reading the instruction manual on the humidifier, I noticed an interesting phrase. It said the humidifier was equipped with a “technologically advanced digital humidistat.”
I love phrases like that, meant to invoke the power, the mystery, the majesty of technology. Say it in a big booming voice everyone—A Technologically Advanced Digital Humidistat!
But here’s what’s cool. I had only heard the word thermostat before to talk about a self-regulating device or thing. The thermostat on your heater turns it on and off automatically. Stops and starts it without your thinking about it. “Therm” means heat. “Stat” is short for stasis, which is a state of rest achieved through no effort of yours.
What the thermostat does for heat, the humidistat does for humidity.
Does that make your house’s roof a rain-i-stat?
But recently I heard another word about how your body’s automatic appetite control is called an appestat. I like it. They say that many obese people have appestat problems. They don’t lack control. Their body has a broken appestat. Makes perfect sense to me. A bag of Salsa Verde Doritos totally short-circuits my appestat.
What a great suffix to create cool new words. If you want to monitor TV viewing, get a video-stat. Same way with cutting down on excessive internet surfing. Get a web-i-stat. Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty? Their problem is they don’t have a sex-i-stat like the rest of us.
Teenager spending all day with his or her earbuds in? Maybe they need an ipod-i-stat. We all know they could use a text-i-stat.
Or how about for the person who obsessively and compulsively buys apps from the iPhone app store? The newest app for your iPhone, the technologically advanced digital app-i-stat.
Or since it’s an appestat for your appetite for buying apps maybe we should call it an appe-appestat...
America, ya gotta love it.