Fellow wordsmith and man-about-town Biscuit recently noted some of his favourite words and his IM asking me to chime in with mine didn’t make it in time. Since then, great words have been zooming by me and my ears are more finely tuned than usual to pick them out, roll them around, and delightedly romp in the hay with them. Yes! Words are great. Here are some of the words I like to take out on a Friday night and call my baby, say hey waiter, bring on the bubbly, nothing’s too good for these girls:
Reciprocity!
Chicanery!
Vitriolic!
Cacophonous!
Electorate!
Alacrity!
Flotsam!
Debauched!
Fecundity!
Esoteric!
Somnambulant!
Chimera!
Effluvia!
What wonderful words! What humdingers! And you know me, I rarely get crazy with the exclamation points. But damn, these words are charging guns ablaze through the swinging saloon doors and taking the entire sentence hostage with their sharp, shiny edges. These words, they’re like the electric guitar in the polka hall of language.
What are some of your favourite words?
words, words, words
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Etiolate, lackadaisical, pituitary, subtlety, emic, autochthonous, that old chestnut floccinaucinihilipilification, verdant, luthier, oenophile, anodyne (which sounds so much like it means), and my all-time favorite, skunk.
juxtaposition, illuminate, and ennui
crisp, superfluous, odious, love, crimson, luminous.
Conrad, I’m afraid you’re going to have to justify SKUNK being your favourite word in that all-star list.
My favorite words when spoken into a microphone for tv or radio are “book” and “package”. I just love the way they sound. So very odd, i know.
Have you read the children’s book Flotsam?
Persnickety! I also love the Scottish word “dreich” (a lovely evocative word describing a setting that is damp, gloomy, profoundly uninviting … a word that only the Scots could have coined so accurately!)
When I was little I loved the word cloak and could barely stand to hear the word package or gift. I don’t know why -they drove me to distraction. One of life’s little mysteries I guess.
I guess what I like about “skunk” is that it seems to have parachuted into the English language from another planet. It doesn’t sound or look much like anything else. Usually you’d have a c to make the sound the first k makes, but no. It sounds kind of dirty and disrespectful, and I love skunks, so every time I hear it I feel kind of protective.
Well justified. I’m with you on loving skunks, too, the sly little bastards. So smart!
Ooo, chimera is one of my favs, too. I also like sponge, haberdashery, kitten, fathom.
Duplicitous, duplicity, wonky, plethora, kismet,
higgledy-piggledy!
Poppycock, olive, lambast, vivacious, lush, wow, tumultuous, love.
acquiescence, pamplemousse, xylophone, persimmon, melancholy, ominous, pillow, filigree….
ooh! pamplemousse – that’s a good one!
Oh god yes, I love chicanery. What a great word!
My personal favourites are embryonic, microcosm and lasagna. The last one for obvious reasons.
Prolix. Just because it sounds absolutely opposite of what it means. And aubergine, because it rolls delicately off the tongue and sounds so much more elegant than “eggplant.” A plant of eggs? I don’t think so. an aubergine.
Krissa, I think you should try to squeeze all of these into an entry (without turning them into a list of your friends’ favorite words.)
great post, krissa. i love the last paragraph – swinging saloon doors – yahoo!
Ebullient. Lachrymose. Brouhaha. Pedant. Humuhumunukunuku Apua’a (the official state fish of Hawaii).
This was a great post!
Exodus (movement of the people)
jumping on the bandwagon a week late…
imbrued. inviolate. pamper. chthonic. bivouac. and all of those others that people mentioned, too.