I love words. I love the sound of them strung sweetly together and how a single word or syllable can invoke all sorts of feelings. I sort of collect words.
Not in a stamp collection or dictionary kind of way, but I wear certain words on my tongue like flavors of the week (or month, or year, or what have you). To make it into my casual repertoire, a word must meet the following criteria:
- The word has to sound somewhat sophisticated (there's nothing better than throwing big words casually into a normal sentence "We should be as inconspicuous as possible.", and I often begin such sentences with an "ah," as in "Ah, I've found the elusive keys!") or at least be unusual enough to make me sound smart.
- It has to be fun to say. Often this demands having a large number of vowels, and some playful (L, Y, K, P, N, etc) consonants scattered about.
- I have to know what it means or have a way of using it so confidently that people don't have the time to notice I have used it incorrectly.
Here are my current word favorites:
elusive
inconspicuous
wonky I'll have you know that I was one of the very first to bring this word back. (If you don't think it's "back" yet or if it's ever "been" then you are clearly behind the times.) I've been using this word ever since I misread a Quidditch move in Harry Potter 4 (I have a tendency to just jumble letters together and make up my own pronunciation, and then I always just say it that way).
notorious
illustrious
innocuous I enjoy using this word incorrectly. I think it looks and sounds much more ominous and sneaky than its meaning portrays. Much to Jk's frustration, I am now adding this word to my current list and using it to mean "bad" or an "undesirable smell".
and that reminds me.... ominous
Take a few for your own, and hopefully I'll snag some more soon!
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