Sunday, August 15, 2010

Words I Enjoy


Does anybody else have mental lists of words that you're sort of proud to know, love the meaning/sound/origins of, and wish you could use more often without getting funny looks? You know, those delightful polysyllabic inkhorn terms and foreign loan words that you know because you (a) obsessed over the verbal SAT or (b) picked up while cheating at online Scrabble. Here are two near the top on my list.

Sobriquet - soh-bruh-key - a nickname. I like the fact that it's an alternative word for nickname, which in itself is an alternative word for something; a nickname for a nickname.

Oubliette - oo-blee-et - a secret dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling, as in certain old castles. This one is great for its imagery and its origins. Derived from the french verb meaning to forget, it's easy to picture something or someone getting tossed into a dank room to be forgotten about. Not exactly a word I get to use in everyday speech, but it's good for a dousing of heavy imagery if the need arises.

I'll use this list as something I can add to if otherwise lacking writing topics. Maybe I should rephrase that. I'll add to it when I get too lazy to dive into more interesting topics. Oh, and for the record, I never took the SAT...

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