Read this whole thread. People are posting their favorite words.
I mean, you just have to love a thread where the word “bumbershoot” comes up.
Now reminder – because this always happens when any “word” thing comes up: This is about favorite WORDS, not favorite CONCEPTS.
It always annoyed me at the Inside the Actors Studio seminars when people were asked in the questionnaire at the end “what is your favorite word” and their answer would be “love”. Or “courage”. Or whatever. Concepts. These are concepts. The word encompasses the concept, yes, of course. But word??
Your favorite word may be “muck”, because you like the sound of it – but you may find that muck itself is kind of a gross thing. One person on the thread I link to says their favorite word is “syphilis” – and then hastens to add: “For the sound of it, not the meaning!”
It was refreshing when Holly Hunter came to do the seminar (on my birthday, as I recall) and she thought about it for a long long time, and then said, “Portentous. I just like saying it. Por-ten-tous.”
My kind of chick.
My favorite words?
Elixir
Evensong
Nonsense
Symmetrical
Mash
Bailiwick
Bailiwick. Yum. I love that.
I also like crepescular.
(via Book Slut)
level
because it’s the only word I can think of that looks exactly like what it means.
I’ll go with “scotch”
Scotch. It sure is a level elixir.
The two words I think are among the most fun to say are: flibbertigibbet and bungalow.
I guess that pretty much makes them my favorite.
hootch.
nookie
dead
In the sense of denoting an absolute. As in dead certain, dead lame, dead fit, dead tight on the wire. It’s a horse racing thing (duuuuuhhh!!!). I’ve been told it’s of Irish origin, but no one seems to know how dead got to mean absolute(ly).
I find it hard to choose a favorite word in English. Now in Spanish, with the rolled “r’s” and the accents I have tons of them.
“Oklahoma,” as in OklahomaOklahomaOklahomaOklahomaOklahomaOklahoma!
Okay, it helps if you’ve seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels one too many times…
He-hee, Mr. Z. “Not mother?” I loved Michael Caine in that movie.
I like “barbarism.” Also, I want to see the slang term “solid” used as an adverb revived. The word doesn’t have so much of a meaning as it is a mere intensifier. Example: someone asks you if you can do something, and you respond, “I solid can!”
Cadaver
This is like Sophie’s Choice but here goes:
Hedonism
Abyssmal
Gesticulate
Conflagration
Chisenbop!
“telephony”
“octothorpe”
“schwa”
“Vladivostok” (although we should probably leave proper nouns out of this)
I know I have others, but I can’t remember them at the moment. I keep thinking of a favorite phrase:
“flux creep”: in superconductivity, the phenomena of gradual motion (“creep”) of pinned magnetic flux lines past their pinning sites, resulting in a decay of the supercurrent
I also have favorite rhymes, and least-favorite rhymes (rhymes I find cliched, such as “walk”:”talk”)…
But I digress..
Ooh. This is just the best site ever.
Mine are:
lollygagging
sluttish
sullied
and, keeping up the theme here:
louche
I think it’s time that someone attempts to work all of these words into a paragraph.
I mean: Vladivostok and bungalow … these words!! Love it!
anyone want to give it a go?
Red – Serendipity Happy word hunting. Terry
figgy-dowdy. dragoon. slattern. homunculus.
Nincompoop, Wombat, and Philanthropist.
epiphany
luminescence
electroencephalograph
fantasy
delphinium
And if proper nouns are permitted: Mendelssohn.
party people
shiznit
cluster
plethora of course.
clusterfuck (pardon my french)
flipperdinger
janx
all quality words.
Diaphanous – I like the way it sounds and it also “sounds” to me like what it means
Thwarted – I like the sound of it, the “Thw” combination at the beginning is like a little hammer blow.
Aurora – Just a pretty word for a pretty thing.
Sonnet – Again, it seems an apt description of that which it names. It feels compact and symmetrical.
Nautilus – this may be a situation of liking the concept behind the word; the chambered nautilus is one of the critters that fascinates me, mostly because it follows the “Golden Proportions” in its shell construction
Mincing – again, I like it because it fits what it’s describing. And it’s fun to say. And it’s a good precise word.
Fluff – It has a comforting sound to me.
equivical
exorbitant
transmogrify
stigmatize
Squeegee, Bouillabaisse, Bougainvillea, Isthmus, Syzygy, Ethereal, Twerp, Brouhaha, Callipygian, Chrysanthemum, Euthanasia, Flibbertigibbet, Gobbledygook, Juggernaut, Kaleidoscope, Kwashiorkor, Boisterous, Onomatopoeia, & Uxorious; there are just too many good words.