Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Meme - Words you Love, Words you Hate

I take my cue from Shelly's blog here. She created a meme about words you hate and words you love. Really simple. Turns out my family is sort of obsessed with this particular discussion topic. I can tell you right now that MOIST is at the top of my sister's most hated list. I used to know a bunch more hated and loved, but hopefully they will pipe in with comments and leave their favorites or least favorites there for the record.

Merriam-Websters did their own study of favorite words and came out with this list:
2004 Top Ten Favorite Words
defenestration
serendipity
onomatopoeia
discombobulate
plethora
callipygian
juxtapose
persnickety
kerfuffle
flibbertigibbet

Anyhow, without further ado, my assignment:

5 words you love:
GARROULOUS (not because I am, but because of the sound of it)
ANTIQUARIAN
TACIT and TACTILE (there is something about the sound of them)
SERENDIPITY
BUCOLIC

5 words you loathe:
PHLEGM
COLIC
VOMIT
PUS
SLIME

A word you use way too often:
NO!

A word you can't stand to hear mispronounced:
I pretty much agree with this whole list.
And, another, it's a phrase actually, "CHAMPING AT THE BIT" SO many people say "CHOMPING AT THE BIT"
Oh, and a shout out for my sister who hates, ORIENTATED.

Words that are new to you and their definitions:
APHORISM. From the Greek word aphorismos, meaning ''definition.'' Aphorism: poetic form of definition.

QWERTY. We can dispatch of qwerty quickly, for it is the word to describe the typewriter keyboard (the top row of letters from left to right).

FROTTON. The word frotton is on the list--and is taken from printing. It is a "dabber or burnisher used to press the damp sheet upon the inked block." The frotton is a small cushion of cloth stuffed with wool. But the French word frotter means to rub, and because the early 20th century was obsessed with sex (any different from today?), the root frott increasingly became used to speak about sexual perversions or "rubbings." Though frotton was coined in the 1870s, it was driven out of use by Ellis's book on the psychology of sex (1933) where he said: "The special perversion of frottage..consists in a desire to bring the clothed body, and usually though not exclusively the genital region, into close contact with the clothed body of a woman." It is, a later writer tells us, a "morbid development of the normal sexual excitatory effects of touching."

Another blog meme asks:

what are your favourite words, and why?
what does that tell us about you?
write about it on your blog and invite other bloggers to write about it.
link back to this blog (change therapy at http://moritherapy.org) and i’ll
gather the words and contributors in a list and publish it
stumble your “favourite word” post (as long as they meet my stumble criteria, which shouldn’t be difficult with a post like this)

I will handle that one later!

2 comments:

Lorraine said...

Speaking of words I don't know, what the heck is a "meme?"

Lisa said...

LOL at Lorraine's meme comment! ITA with that!

First of all, I LOVE the words serendipity and onomatopoeia! Serendipity especially. Oh...and anomaly and ambivalent.

Secondly. I'm sorry. I say chomping, not champing. I've never even heard the word champing before. I'm pretty sure I have to stop using that expression now that I know the truth.