Hey all…my late maternal grandfather was, as some of you know, something of a colloquial wordsmith. I don’t think he did it intentionally, but he drew me into the world of unusual and picturesque language simply by using it. He would sometimes indicate that it was time for a conversation by saying we were due for a “confab”.  As a kid, I didn’t wonder what he meant – the actions that followed defined the word. It meant “it’s time to talk”.  The fact that he also called these intersections “chin wags” probably helped to clarify the matter.  (Now really – don’t you think “chin wag” is more interesting than the contemporary “blah blah blah” as a stand in for “chat”?)  In any case, I never bothered to see if it was a real word or not. Until recently…when I discovered that it is a contraction of “confabulation”. Turns out Grandpa had it right, as far as dictionary words go. “Confabulation” can mean, quite simply, “to talk informally; to chat”, or “to hold a discussion about something”.  How about that! It can also be a technical term that has to do with the way that we sometimes (and brain damaged people often) fill in blanks in our memories by making things up.