I don’t usually stay up late enough to watch Conan O’Brien but awhile back I caught a show during which he campaigned to bring back use of the word thrice.
Thrice. Indeed, a fun word.
Yesterday Karen wrote about beautiful words so well that today I thought we could play with words and look at those that are entertaining. I’d like to suggest some other fun words that I think just aren’t used enough.
Slapdash
Because I’d rather negotiate contracts, send out proposals, and encourage writers, I employ a slapdash approach to housekeeping.
Draconian
While Steve Laube is draconian regarding book proposals, cooperative writers are rewarded with praise and contracts.
Phalanx
Popular agents and editors face a phalanx of proposals upon returning from conferences.
Twixt
There’s a lot of work twixt writing a proposal and getting a book published.
Ribald
We are never allowed to be ribald in CBA.
Lickety-split
I can do my slapdash housework lickety-split!
Fractious
Incoherent proposals make me fractious.
Tolerable
Oh, I’m feeling tolerable today. How about you?
Serious words everyone needs to say more often. Seriously:
I love you.
You are beautiful.
I thank God for you every day.
Your turn:
What are some fun words you like?
I’d like to see thrice and twixt come back. My family still uses lickety-split and tolerable. But I love slap-dash. Had forgotten all about that word. I need to throw it into my vocabulary. And Tamela, I thank God for you every day. You are a blessing!
Hear! Hear! for thrice, I use it all the time, maybe if enough of us refuse to leave it alone it’ll come back!
I was the original word nerd in high school, so this IS fun.
fallacious,
regale,
moxie,
indiscriminate,
megalomaniac
Thanks for showing a girl a good time! 😀
Fancy meeting you here Critter. Let’s not forget balderdash. I remember that being a favorite word of the adults when I was a child. Yikes! Does that date me?
Lickspittle. Gets the point across without profanity.
My favorite of those is phalanx, and especially the sentence you wrote. It gives such a wonderful word picture of those proposals lined up, shoulder to shoulder, an immovable force until you’ve read them all. LOL
“I am sorry.” By far the most powerfully healing yet underused phrase.
For fun I like “taradiddle.”
Once, before bed, my weary wife looked at a pile of something needing to be cleaned and mumbled, “I’ll do it tomorning.” That should be an official word, in my opinion.
Spatula.
I am having a blast reading all of your comments. And thank you so much, Debbie Lynne! Right back atcha! 🙂
I dunno. My kids say this all the time, especially when I ask them questions. Said without any consonants – just vowels and inflections. Our family also loves columnar. It’s an inside joke 🙂
They used the word pollywog on the radio this morning.
It’s a fun word.
I think pterodactyl is fun too :D. The word. The actual dinosaurs would be scary. I saw/read whichever Jurassic Park it was they were in. No thank you.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is my favorite fun word. When I say it Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke singing it comes back to mind and it does lift my spirits. Wiki has a great history of the word and how it came to be.
I like cute fun words like puffy, fluffy, sunshine, cuddle, and the slang word huggle ^.^
Lynn got the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in there first. I like it, too. 🙂
I actually coined a word back in ’07 when I got tired of people asking if I was a reader or a writer. I call myself a wreader. (Don’t laugh too hard.)
I like ‘derisively’. I used it in a contest entry once and a judge said it was a 50 cent word that most people wouldn’t understand. She advised me to stick to 5 cent words. *sigh
Other favs:
– facetious
– cummerbund
– do-hickey
– iota
Now that my mind’s rolling with wonderful words, I’m off to write. Ta-ta
Oh, there’s another one. 🙂
Aw, keep your 50 cent word, that’s how you grow vocabularies is through reading. Imagine if we never put in 50 cent words, no one would learn new words. Now if you were using 50 cent words every sentence, that’s something else and just show off, but I doubt you were doing that.
Sometimes the 50-cent word is the best word…especially when you would have to utilize more than 10 5-cent words to get the same point across 🙂
Fun post! I’m a fan of “facetious.”
Twitterpate aptly describes what my children did as post-toddlers. It probably means something else today thanks to that little blue bird. My son once hollered from the back seat of our car (regarding his little sister), “Amanda is anagonating me!” Unfortunately, I knew exactly what he meant. Scary. But perhaps my favorite word(s) was coined by a sixth grader in my Ancient World History class who believed we were going to learn about Mrs. Potamia.
I’ve always liked onomatopoeia:the naming of a thing or action by vocal imitation of the sound associated with it.
I also like bamboozle and hoodwink.
When my father was growing up, his family lived next door to a family named Davenport. Apparently, the Davenports weren’t especially nice, so the children took to calling each other “you ol’ Davenport” when annoyed with each other.
And let’s preserve “nefarious,” please.
The last time I referred to a character in a movie as nefarious, heads swiveled toward me and I saw the unspoken question: “He was WHAT?” Lol.
Fun words here are a few of mine.
thingamabob,dohickey, and whatchmacallit
Horse or bull feathers(works nicely instead of cussing)
And the latest in my current vocabulary
Infernal.
his infernal clipboard that he carries every where.
These are just a few.
Love you too
God bless.
Thanks, Melissa. I once read a contemporary romance with 50 cent words in every paragraph. I looked up every word, too. It was a terrific learning experience, however I didn’t derive any pleasure from it. The story got lost in the dictionary.
Speaking of kids and words… We were discussing pasteurized milk once and our then two-year-old, who was very adept at speaking, kept saying she didn’t understand what passing the milk near your eyes had to do with it. (And the drum goes Da-dum.)
Hijinks and tomfoolery are good. I also like discombobulated…I have felt like that a lot this semester 🙂
As for under-used phrases:
I apologize.
I was wrong.
You are special. (or awesome, or any other kind of uplifting word.)
I sometimes get funny looks from others when I tell my grown children they totally rock, to which I respond, “well, they do.”
My aunt Mildred and grandmom from Tennessee used to say that a lot, “I’m feeling tolerable today,” so how nice to see that word/phrase used again! And Anita, “past your eyes” — too funny! Jodi, I love, love “I am sorry” as the most healing words we can use. My most recent favorite word came to me through a friend’s short story: Supplication. So filled with yearning and meaning.
Bombastic! I’m pretty sure I heard Angela Hunt use this word at the Indy writers conference this weekend. It made me smile….
A few years ago I learned the word “fard” from A Word A Day.
Unfortunately, there are few occasions to utter it — and then it must be spoken with the utmost care.
Peter, what does “fard” mean? I would love to use it some day.
I especially love words that begin with “t.” Don’t rightly know why. But here are a few:
turgid and tumid (which have the same definition)
and tintinabulation.
I’m a fan of the word ‘tolerable’, as in, things are ‘tolerable to middling’.
What fun posts! Cheryl, my grandmother used to say, “Fair to middling.”
My faves: discombobulated, bumfuzzled and bamboozled
With a nod at my Irish ancestry: shenanigans, leprechaun, shillelagh
I, too, love the word facetious, and use it all the time. Unfortunately, my youngest son does also. He will do something completely, obnoxiously sarcastic, and then indicate he was only being “facetious”. Yeah, right….
Linda — How funny! (Of course, it’s easy for *me* to say that since I’m not his mom.) At least you know you are teaching him an awesome vocabulary!