Thursday, December 23, 2010

OKAY, BUT HOW MANY CAN YOU USE IN A SENTENCE?  Dr. Robert Beard believes he has determined the 100 most beautiful words in the English language.  "Moist" did not make the cut, but "diaphanous," "insouciance," "propinquity" and "tintinnabulation" did.

42 comments:

  1. Adam C.10:45 AM

    Seventeen?

    "The woebegone ingenue, partially obscured in the penumbras of the earthen pit (redolent of petrichor), looked up with the incipient epiphany of ineffable fear at her host, who was clad only in a diaphanous robe of gossamer silk, as his earlier murmurous and mellifluous suggestion that she commence an embrocation with the provided emollient took a most untoward turn into Kookoobananatown:  'PUT THE FUCKING LOTION IN THE BASKET!!!' he shrieked, a harbinger of doom in the offing."

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  2. Ha!  This is genius.

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  3. Meghan11:25 AM

    You know what's funny?  I don't think umbrella is all that beautiful a word in English but I've always liked it in French (parapluie--pronounced pair-a-ploo-EE). 

    I'd like to give Adam C. mad props for what he did up there.

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  4. I second the Adam C. mad props.

    My favorite word in English is ELEEMOSYNARY -- I love the way it sounds, its meaning (charitable), and it's also the title of a beautiful play by Lee Blessing that I adore, which has some wonderful other words in it and is a good play for readers of this blog as one of the characters is a girl who wins the National Spelling Bee (not a spoiler.)

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  5. Adam C.12:45 PM

    Thanks for the props - the definition of "embrocation" supplied all the necessary inspiration.  

    And I second Meghan's love of parapluie (not to mention pamplemousse).

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  6. J.O'Connor2:15 PM

    "Petrichor" sounds like an evil corporation in a James Cameron film.   This Dr. Beard fellow may be right that it's an English word (though it's new to me), but it isn't beautiful.   That said, I'm going to try to work Adam's phrase "redolent of petrichor" into a sentence this weekend, probably to describe wine.

    Same thing with another word on that list, "fugacious," which sounds like a Glee mash-up of Fergie and the Fugs, although that might actually work, say "My Humps" blended with "I Like Boobs Alot."

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  7. patricia2:23 PM

    They also have a related 100 Funniest Words list, which has some really awesome words on it that I am incorporating into my daily life immediately.

    http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/100_funniest_words.html

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  8. There's a lot of billingsgate at every Eagles game.  <span> </span>

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  9. Adam C.3:14 PM

    The office next to mine is also a source of a metric eff-ton of billingsgate.  (Entertainingly so, except when I'm on speakerphone.)

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  10. Marsha4:23 PM

    I've always loved that the word for umbrella in Spanish is paraguas - literally, "for waters."

    "Grapefruit" is another word that sounds better in french - pamplemousse!

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  11. isaac_spaceman4:27 PM

    I know that from Flight of the Conchords' "Foux de Fa Fa." 

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  12. Adam C.5:08 PM

    Pamplemousse!
    Ananas!
    Jus d'orange!
    Boeuf!
    Soup du jour!
    Camembert!
    Jacques Cousteau!

    The line reading/singing of "Boeuf!" kills me every time.

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  13. Watts5:13 PM

    catercornered?  Don't they mean cattycorner?

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  14. Meghan6:14 PM

    I almost included pamplemousse but decided not to and then multiple people brought it up. Is there something intrinsic in pamplemousse that causes widespread similar reaction...like the anti-moist?

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  15. Joseph Finn9:15 AM

    It's properly cater-cornered (Cater is from quatre, French for four, for "four cornered"); it being a homonym for cat or kitty, there are plenty of regional variations to reflect that (up here in the Midwest, I'd say kitty-corner seems to be prevalent).

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  16. D'Arcy10:31 AM

    I play a game with my students called Pamplemousse, which is a counting game where you can't say the magic number, any multiple of the magic number, or any number containing the magic number. Instead of those numbers, you have to say pamplemousse. I've had too many seventh and eighth graders pronounce it as "Pop the moose" to find the word beautiful. I am still a fan of parapluie. And écureuil, which means squirrel.

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