At home, I have two wonderful books. The first, if I remember right, is called The Lexicographer's Orgy, and it's a collection of famous people's favorite words.
Joe Bob Briggs' was "estacionamiento," because of the sensuous way it rolls off the tongue. It means "parking lot."
Ricardo Montalban's was "lambent," which refers to a kind of dim, warm radiance.
The other book is called There's a Word For It!, and is a collection of foreign words that can't be translated into English.
"Uffda!" is what Swedish people say, for instance, when a baby falls down. It's an exclamation for a minor accident.
The best words, though, are Japanese:
"Wabi" - the flaw which makes a thing aesthetically complete. Like a baroque pearl, or the wobbliness of raku pottery.
"Aware" (ah-wah-ray) - the beauty of sadness. Almost every band I like has an instinctual awareness of aware. Low. Codeine. Joy Division. In the movie "Shall We Dance?", when the frustrated day worker looks up from his train window to the beautiful woman gazing hopelessly out of the dance studio, that's a moment of aware.
Personally, I also favor "eigenstate" because it sounds so lovely.
And I tend to use three words from Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's The Meaning of Liff, where they took ridiculous place names and assigned them to things that needed words.
"Kentucky" - adjective describing a perfect, accidental fit, like when you're stacking books in a new shelf and the last volume slides in perfectly.
"Albuquerque" - a non-representational, decorative squiggle, like you see around a mosque or maybe in a Miro painting.
"Kettering" - the pattern of lines or squares you get in your skin after reclining on wicker furniture or strappy poolside chairs. (I also apply it to lines from corduroy or irregular patterns the floor leaves on unprotected, kneeling knees.) |
