Nitwit! Blubber! Odment! Tweak!

[dolorous_ett]

Words are wonderful things. And one of the nice things about working between languages is the puzzles you set yourself where words don't quite correspond to each other. Or where you discover a completely new word for a concept your native language just doesn't have.

So - what's your favourite word? In English, or in any other language. And why do you like it?

Comments

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Sanctimonious.

I love its quality of sounding exactly like what it is. I actually have a bet with myself that I can get it into everything I write, one way or the other.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

A very fine word indeed - and one that needs to be brought out regularly when discussing Things Online...

[waterbird.livejournal.com]

My favourite German word is Brustkorb because it translates literally as "breast basket". (It means ribcage.)

Among English words, I quite like cacophonous (for the way it sounds), though I don't think it's my favourite. I will have to give that some more thought.

You might like this site: Wordie.org. Someone linked me to it recently, but I haven't yet spent much time exploring it.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Brustkorb is fantastic - I'd no idea!

And the Wordie sight is great - thank you!

[prelud.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite word is "defenestration" (which I learned at the age of twelve, from reading Calvin and Hobbes.) I just love the fact that it exists at all.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and among foreign words, I'm fond of gebeorscipe, which is Anglo-Saxon for "beer bash."

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

A great word - like a lot of Anglo-Saxon words, you can sort of see what it means... once you already know!

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Good heavens... I'd no idea. I had to look it up in Wikipedia!

[prelud.livejournal.com]

Czech kids have a lot of fun when that part of their history comes up in school.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly have a favourite word, but like zoepaleologa I love words that sound exactly like their meanings. Sonorous, for example.

I've always had an insane love for "schwarzwälderkirschtorte" (black forest gateau). I think it was the first time I realised - must've been in a German lesson at age 12-ish - that languages are related; people don't just make up arbitrary words for things (except in Iceland). They borrow words, they have words forced on them, they twist them for their own purposes. And that's what I love about European languages, at least: there's almost always a connection, a clue that tells you not just about the word itself, but the people and place from which it came.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

That is a fantastic explanation of why words are fun - I will mark this for future reference. (I would go into even more raptures about this explanation, but I'm feeling rather weary tonight).

I love loan words and new words in Chinese for perhaps similar reasons.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

*g* Am terribly sleep-deprived due to too much translation work, writing and beta-reading; clearly what that does is make me very, very passionate about words.

[prelud.livejournal.com]

Well written!
I especially like discovering such links between Slavic languages.

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of twilight and twinkle, because of the way they sound. I also like really long words, like anticonstitutionellement (anticonstitutionally, the longest word in French), and wapenstilstandsonderhandelingen (cease-fire negociations, the official longest word in Dutch). But the best one is: hottentottententententoonstellingen (unofficial longest word in Dutch, meaning exhibitions of Hottentot tents).
I also have a least favourite word: orteil, meaning toe in French. It sounds downright ugly.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of twilight and twinkle,

How very Dumbledore-like of you! (sorry - just can't help feeling he must have been fond of such words).

And hottentottententententoonstellingen - what a word!

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

Well, he did have a twinkle in his eyes...
And hottentottententententoonstellingen rocks (especially on radioactive ground).

[prelud.livejournal.com]

hottentottententententoonstellingen

That`s...beautiful.

So...tentoonstelling means exhibiton?

[dbassassin.livejournal.com]

In English: pleasure. It has a lovely meaning, it has a nice flow to it, and it feels physically pleasurable to say (I don't like tongue-twister words).

In Latin: frigidarium. It means the cold room in a Roman bathhouse (which would have a series of rooms from ambient heat to warm to very hot, steam rooms, then rooms with cool baths for plunging into after the steam room, and you would do the circuit in order). I always feel like I'm trying to re-arrange marbles in my mouth when I say it, but there's an amusing memory associated with the word so I've always been very fond of it.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I used to like "pleasure" a lot more than I now do - the trouble was all my students in China who couldn't say it and pronounced it "player". Kind of took away the fun...

I can remember learning about all the names for Roman bathhouse rooms in a history lesson. I can't now recall why the teacher thought we would need this - I've certainly never had a Roman bath.

Glad to see you about again, by the way - I hope all's well!

[prelud.livejournal.com]

My favorite English word is dandelion. It`s a beautiful word and I adore dandelions.

In Slovak I have many favorites. Can`t decide.
The longest one is "najneobhospodarovatelnejšia". It means "(land) least suitable for cultivating".

There`s also a sentence "Strč prst skrz krk." (č=[tch])
It means "put your finger in your throat." No vowels!

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

According to my Mum, "dandelion" was one of the first words I tired to say. Because I wasn't very good at talking yet, I don't think I got very far, though!

And that is the longest anything with no vowels I've ever seen - and a great meaning too!

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Solidarity: a nice round sounding word with a wonderful and inspiring meaning
squish: I like the way this sounds
geek: a satisfying descriptive word, which when I first discovered it meant I found others like me...
eheu: Latin for 'alas'. I think it should be a matter of concern that I can say alas in four living and two dead languages.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Solidarity was one of those words I'd heard around for a long time before I actually learned what it meant - so it was rather gratifying to learn it had a good meaning too...

And I certainly use geek a lot too - though I've never knowingly said "eheu"...

(now I have to ask - what's the other dead language?)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Forlorn. I like that sound of it, which is slightly slow and sad, and I also like the irony that a word which means things along the line of lost, abandoned, doomed, desolate, is formed from an obsolete verb! I assume that I first came across it in "the maiden all forlorn" in The House That Jack Built, which I had as a picture book as a child.

I don't have a favourite Danish word, but I am childish enough to like the fact that - like a comedy sketch - it has ordinary words that are rude in English - slag, slut, and fart meaning type/slice, finished, and motion/moving respectively.

(I think that Nineveh as a word looks great as a pattern. Unfortuatnely it is not euphonious)

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I don't have a favourite Danish word, but I am childish enough to like the fact that - like a comedy sketch - it has ordinary words that are rude in English - slag, slut, and fart meaning type/slice, finished, and motion/moving respectively.


I love it when that happens, don't you?

And forlorn is a good word too.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I feel that it reaches its apotheosis (another good word) in the illuminated sign oft seen inside lifts, "I FART".