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Words You Love/ Words You Hate

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This Sunday

22:37 / 26.04.07

'Ostensibly' is a good one. I like 'kinda' in type, but not in speaking. It's a good word for delaying the reader.

I really love the words 'fabulous' and 'marvelous' and 'suffuse' because they'e fab and marvelous and, possibly suffusy. And fun.

I really don't much like the words 'cock' or 'literary' much. The first doesn't sound much like any of its meanings to me, and the latter is too far abused as amphigory.

Saint Keggers

22:50 / 26.04.07

cacophony - love it

y'all - hate it. In a grab the utterer by the earlobes and smash their head into my knee. Hate it. Hate it. HATE IT!

This Sunday

22:53 / 26.04.07

Kegs, I've got a few States in mind if you're up for that many earjerks into the knee of justice. (And a note to avoid certain pronouns if I'm ever within arm's reach.)

sorenson

23:19 / 26.04.07

I would like to put up a defence for 'moist'. It's a lovely word - it conjures up dark damp places that smell delicious, fringed with ferns and with loamy soil underfoot. (I love the word loamy too.)

I suspect that the reason people hate it so much is because it also conjures the damp dark place women have between their legs, a place that is culturally very uncomfortable - but to me, that's a lovely place to go too.

My most hated word, like many other people's, is a word that I use too much - 'sorry'. I say sorry so much that I sometimes find myself saying sorry for saying sorry. It betrays a terrible lack of self-confidence that I mostly manage to camouflage, and I hate it for that.

But it may be no accident that I named myself on-line after a character who must name himself every time he apologises...

This Sunday

23:32 / 26.04.07

Sorenson, I think other people in this thread must have very different experiences with 'moist', because I hear/say it and think of about seven different very nice things first.

And memories of a friend announcing loudly (big fella) at about one thirty in the morning, after someone had let the word slip out: Moist is for cake and women! Quit ruining it for me!

Never did find out what the use was that had threatened the word for him. Possibly the same use that's soured it for many others, some here.

fish confusion errata

23:43 / 26.04.07

Spoken language is so incredibly complex, in formal structure, and in elements like intonation and gestures. We can produce two different utterances with the same formal structure, but they mean different things because of the intonation pattern, the timing, or what we do with our eyebrows. I love all words.

Tsuga

23:47 / 26.04.07

Kali, are you from the south, originally? I don't know how you could hate the contraction y'all. I can imagine many times when it's uttered in some insipid way (I like that word, "insipid") by a slack-jawed ignoramus, as in "Gawd, y'all, don't you just love it?" When it is naturally used in conversation it's kinda (ahem) nice.

I love words that describe something unique, perfectly. Ostensibly is a good one, like gradation or clarity or disjunct or isolated or coterminous, exhilarated and exhausted. Well, there are endless words, really. Certainly some sound nicer. Sibilants and fricatives and nascent and squeamish, mellifluous, or symplast.
I hate mucid and mucilaginous, though they're descriptive. I know someone who couldn't hear the word "slice" without squirming.

Tsuga

23:49 / 26.04.07

One other word I hate that I use waaay too much is "whatever", when I'm too lazy to talk about something anymore.

Triplets

01:19 / 27.04.07

Moist is for cake and women!

*shudder*

astrojax69

05:11 / 27.04.07

fillip is always a good word to get into a formal briefing.

i absolutely and entirely uttely farggin' detest impact, unless someone is talking about the noun implicated in a collison betwixt two physical bodies... grrr. [i think i'm losing the battle, though]

and i love the word ciao lovely, rolls off the tongue in fruity excitement and is versatile - hello or goodbye - what more do you need?

ciao f'now...

Triplets

11:02 / 02.05.07

And Triplets, is your C.A. from the U.S.A.? Cos that's the only place I've heard "zhuzh" before.

Nope, she's from Britain. She used to be an interior decoration program nut.

Today's hateword: keetom, which is from the more ball-boilingly twee sites on the internet, ex., "awwww issa kwoot lil keetom!!!

"

It's a fucking cat! Sort it!

Shrug

13:28 / 02.05.07

Try here for some reference on zhoosh and follow the link within the link for some discussion of polari in greater detail.

Not a word I use terribly much but far superior to the similar usage of "jazz" which, in my mind, lacks the almost onomatopaeic energy, of its co-word.

Whisky Priestess

13:31 / 02.05.07

Moist is for cake and women!

Why do I hear that phrase in the voice of Brian Blessed?

Dutch

23:06 / 02.05.07

I still have a distinctly horrific mental shiver any time I hear the words "whatever", or "like" repeated twice within one or two sentences. They are usually used superfluously and uselessly in sentences better served by their absence.

"He was like, and I was like, you know, whatever"

Luckily, not a lot of people speak likese or whateverish in real life as far as I know, and it seems mostly restricted to horrible soaps and persistantly uninteresting drama-series.

astrojax69

01:58 / 03.05.07

you've not spent time lately round teenagers, then, phriar??

sadly, it is too common. but like, whatever...

Olulabelle

07:23 / 03.05.07

I'm fascinated by the number of people who dislike the word moist. I always thought that my dislike of the word was to do with having Synaesthesia; it's a word that makes me physically shudder and feel slightly queasy when I hear it. This also applies to the word glisten.

Moist
Glisten

Eugh.

I also hate the word panties, but not in any Synaesthetic way. it's just vile and wrong and craply pervy in a rubbish furry handcuffs way, rather than a good solid spanking way.

My favourite word is indicative, because I like the ticky-ticky sound of it. And my favourite French word is Désolée. Just because it's beautiful and I like the fact that it means sorry but sounds like desolate, which is how you feel when you're really, really sorry. It's the proper word for truly sorry I think.

I feel sure I've said that before.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:46 / 03.05.07

Um, in America panties is just the word for knickers. Why does Barbelith hate America?*

Also, I gotta say that I think "like" and "whatever" don't fall within the remit of this thread - isn't this thread about actual words you love and words you hate, rather than yet another chance for people to complain about spoken colloquialisms? Why does Barbelith hate teenagers and people who don't talk proper?**

*Kidding.
**Not kidding.

Shrug

08:31 / 03.05.07

Seeing as "kinda" was cited in the first (and opening) post, seems as if "like" and "whatever" would be fair game, flyboy, under the thread's remit, at least.

Harangue: (def) A speech addressed to a large audience often a pompous rant.
I like it very much. Its a word whose visceral quality just resonates.

Happy Dave Has Left

09:15 / 03.05.07

I like lacksadaisical.

Happy Dave Has Left

09:26 / 03.05.07

Oops, hit post before I said why. Here's the definition:
1. without interest, vigor, or determination; listless; lethargic: a lackadaisical attempt.
2. lazy; indolent: a lackadaisical fellow.

Goes hand in hand with wonderful words like 'languid'.

Makes me want to take up smoking and lie around on chaise lounges.

Olulabelle

20:48 / 03.05.07

Um, in America panties is just the word for knickers. Why does Barbelith hate America?*

*Kidding.

Because if you say the sentence, "Could you just take your panties off?" even if you are a doctor making a perfectly proper request you sound like you are in dreadful, unsexy porn.

Spatula Clarke

20:52 / 03.05.07

*pulls panties back up*

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:54 / 03.05.07

Today, I'm enjoying sanitary, on the grounds that is like sucking a lemon to say - "sani-" as a prefix to cleaning stuff has a sharp taste to it. To that end, "moist sani-wipes" is both vilely offensive and consequently quite...delicious.

Crackling, membrane, cream, slip all do it for me, as well.

Keeping in mind that I'm the kind of boy who spends Christmas Day reading the big Oxford Abridged Dictionary he got as a present.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:39 / 08.05.07

Words culled from the day's writings--

Abomination: a touch biblical, certainly, but deliciously judgmental. Abomination grunts and moans into the room with a whole set of spindly, limb-like verbs attached. No need for adjectives, but every one merely amplifies the thing's squelching presence. Not so much a word of horror as a word of affront (and aback -- as in, taken).

Sabbatical: Possibly there's something in the air today around words tinged with unwieldy religion. Sabbatical, as a word, always makes me think of trips to Ireland, for some reason.

Benny the Ball

12:49 / 21.05.07

My new favourite word is opprobium - I can't remember the exact wording of the definition from my dictionary, but it was poetic, almost a hiaku - will write it up when I get home.

Sibelian 2.0

12:16 / 27.05.07

"Arclight" - I love. I don't know why. I can smell it, suppose, ozone.

And I now hate the word "enjoy"...

Princess has an unpleasant experience

Glenn Close But No Cigar

23:22 / 27.05.07

I hate pretty much all of the vocabulary employed in BDSM, inculding the acronym BDSM. There's something about its technical-ness, and it's appeal to (very nerdy, and not in a good way) authority, knowledge etc. that is deeply, deeply unsexy, and seems far more about distance and categorisation than adventure, or intimacy.

Quantum

19:16 / 28.05.07

Good word=cumulonimbus, It's a cloud but it sounds like a type of angel's halo.
Bad word=clunge. Invented by a friend, I just can't get over it. Ugh.

Tsuga

21:50 / 28.05.07

What exactly is a clunge? It sounds like another made-up word from a friend of mine, "linge", which is something you use to clean out a smoking device. As in, "this bat is clogged, I need a linge."

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:58 / 28.05.07

Fine, but what would you call "BDSM"? What would you call a "safeword"? What's the main difference between a general abbreviation like "YMMV" and a specific one such as "YKINOK"?

Benny the Ball

05:17 / 02.06.07

opprobium noun Public disgrace arising from shameful conduct

Shrug

17:04 / 11.12.07

But do you love or hate it, eh?

I've developed a fondness for fleur bleue since, er, the day before yesterrday when my French flatmate described a tv programme as such and I enquired as to his meaning.
It's not 'dictionary.com'-ed but it denotes something which is overly romantic and is a very nice turn of phrase.

Shrug

17:14 / 11.12.07

I dislike the abbreviation hi-mach (for highly machiavellian). I'm not sure if its in regular usage but a person I know identifies as such with a disquieting look in their eyes.

Jack Fear

17:20 / 11.12.07

I think someone is yanking your chain.

Shrug

17:46 / 11.12.07

Ahh, for which one?

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