(no subject)

[42itous]

What are your favorite words? Is it because of their meaning, or their sounds, or connotations, or images they bring to mind?

Comments

[elainetyger]

My favorite is "yes" because when I hear it, I know I'm going to get what I want.

"Rose" because it's my daughter's name and I think of her whenever I hear it. You knew that, I think.

[light_of_summer]

After thinking and thinking about this, I'm not sure I have favorite words. If I do, my mind doesn't seem to have them indexed under that concept.

The closest I can come is that there are a few phrases in languages other than English that just sound cool to me, or are fun to say, e.g.:

"Entschuldigen Sie mir" ("Excuse me" in German)

"Go raibh maith agat" ("Thank you" in Irish, pronounced as in this YouTube clip: https://youtu.be/8QlDZ-ZiU90)

"Papá pon pan para Pepín Pipón" (a Spanish tongue-twister I learned circa 1972, in 7th grade Spanish class, roughly "Papa serves bread to Pepín Pipón"—the Internet seems to have a different version of this one, without "Pipón" but almost twice as long)

I do have favorite punctuation—I am a big fan of em dashes, and I pout a big that my phone keyboard doesn't have em dash the character, and that Dreamwidth doesn't support the HTML code for it. If I want to put a real em dash in a DW post or comment, instead of using two hyphens, I have to go find one somewhere to paste in. 😡 I also suspect that I overuse commas. and I may use more question marks than average, but I have more feelings about em dashes.

[42itous]

Yes. :D

[42itous]

I love "entschuldigung." And "Schörle," which is a thing I wish were commonplace in the US. I've never studied German, but several family members have. My husband taught me "Ich habe meine Gepëck gepäckt." (I'm not entirely sure I'm spelling it right.)

Most of my favorite English words come from this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKL8livmoh8

[bitty]

"Mellifluous," and I'm not sure why.

[drwex]

Liminal - I love the idea behind it, of being between two things and holding a special status. Obviously there are ritual connotations but I also love that period in each day when it's no longer day (the sun has actually set) but it's not quite night (because there's enough light to see by unaided). If I ever form a jazz ensemble I will call it Liminal Cats.

Canonically - in the sense of being the authorized, or recognized prototypical entity. I'm fond of saying that something is "the canonical example of" the thing I'm trying to point to.

[42itous]

In that sense, "canonical" is like "Platonic ideal."

I love liminal objects. Like, I
had a garment that couldn't decide if it was a sweater or a denim jacket.

[drwex]

Interesting. I think of Platonic Ideal as being the perfect version of the thing. For me, the canonical example is the most typical, with all its warts and imperfections.

I like the idea of liminal objects but I'm too rigid a thinker to have many of them in my own life. Maybe that's part of what appeals to me about the concept - a liminal thing is neither A nor B but its own thing, kind of sui generis?

[sorcyress]

I used to keep a file of "wordporn" on my desktop, which was all the words that I just _really_ loved the sounding of. Some ones I remember:

Slut
Sky
Kinesthesia
Chronology
Tertiary
Tintinnabulation

They are just fun for me to say!