Favorite Words
 

1.) Throstle
2.) Lingerie
3.) Widdershins

What you got?

Felicity

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Boustrophedon.

I remember a childhood fairy tale (Irish, i think) where they go round the church three times widdershins to enter the fairy realm. I've liked the word since then.

Petrichor
Saudade
Lutulent

Yeah, "petrichor" has īchōr (ἰχώρ) the blood of the gods in it. Pretty good, pretty good. Keep 'em comin'.

curmudgeon
callous
cantor

My favorite German word is Äpfel. But I also like Kartoffelsalat.

Subtle.

I just learned the word 'rorqual' from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, and I am very glad to know it.

I have favorite words I overuse. One favorite I've never yet been able to use: eftsoons

in Hungarian: szerecsendió

incunabula
fichu

I really like saying them, but have never used them in a poem.

Susan

Mine are here.

Duncan

Nice one, Duncan. The first, suitably poetic, reply.

Two favorite French words:

nénuphar
libellule

Apostasy
Undulating
Anagnorisis
Paraskavedekatriaphobia (but only on special occasions ;))

I like Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Popocatepetl.

Or I did, when I was but thirteen or so...

Chimborazo is the first word in a recent poem of mine: "Mountains I Have Never Climbed." First climbed by Edward Whymper and Louis and Jean-Antoine Carrel, at about 20,000 feet.

Reading that, John, I gasped with delight.

I first came across the words in a poem by W J Turner which turned the key in the lock of my own wordhoard and let it all out. I threw the key away.

If you put the last seven words of my last post into a search engine, they will take you to where I began.

Hi Ann,

I now better appreciate your post! Thank you for sharing the Turner with us, he's not a poet I knew before today. It reminds me a bit of Benet's old poem "American Names".
For my weekly offering, I'd planned to post a new poem called "Close As Candlelight", but I think I should post the Chimborazo thing in honor of this serendipity.

Cheers,
John

brindle, erinaceous, plangent, porculation, rupestral

Connubial, silver, and durst I say honorificabilitudinitatibus?

I've noticed that the majority of words people have chosen cannot be easily rhymed. And no one has gone with a one-syllable word. Make of that what you will.

I chose several.

Duncan

Uniformitarianism
Diatomaceous
Platypus

Many of our lexical choices are indeed both erudite and recondite. I could expatiate further, as I am wont, but I digress. The nub - the crux - of my argument is an old one: brief words have weight.

He's not a formalist, but Larry Levis' "Elegy With an Angel at its Gate" leans heavily on the importance of "its" -- in the title, to be sure, but also throughout. Such an insignificant word, yet so weighty in that long poem.

There are many other examples, of course, but that one springs to mind.

Velleity

my favorite didactylic: minimifidian

my favorite diamphibrachic: uxoriophilic ["being in love with being in love with one's wife," a rather apt description of Petruchio?]

Skanky - it's not a pleasant way to describe someone or something, but I love it all the same, and use it a lot!

Magical

Dodecahedron

Jayne

Skanky! That's great, Jayne. I also love the noun "skank": she's a skank!

Do you know "skink" as well? Here's a link to a skink: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...Ls1oW4CA#spf=1

I could provide a link to a skank as well, if you wish.

A kink for skanks? No thanks!

chthonic
Theotokos
steatopygia
okra
siguiryas

Ahh! Good one, Jayne...and it reminds me of it's "Sk" counterpart, "Sketchy," which I also love (and use far more often than I should).

And as per John's post, I was thinking of another short word that I adore -- "peep." It comes up in Shakespeare all the time, and I love it -- peeping out between Caesar's legs, for instance. It's so innocuous, and a strangely "cute" word, yet Shakespeare in particular often uses it in highly charged contexts.

Alright, let's take this thread to the next level. Now that we have gotten our favorite words out there, let's write bad poetry using those favorite words.

I'll start:

I heard a throstle in the gloom.
He was the apostle of Doom!

(Wait, I think that couplet might be bad-good. Didn't Hardy write something like that?)

Hey - aren't we going to get blasted if we post poems in this forum?

Ann Drysdale: "Hey - aren't we going to get blasted if we post poems in this forum?"

But as the saying goes, if we post prose poems, no-one will know.

John

Ah, yes, Prosedy.

Sorry, but we must stick to the rules, folks, and our own poems aren't allowed in a GT thread.

But - I can either move this thread to Drills & Amusements, or Aaron could start a new thread at D & A, for bad poems using our favourite words - which I think is a better option, personally; I'd like to keep this one going just for people's favourite words, rather than switch it to something else at this point.

Aaron . . . it's your call :)

Jayne

Rules schmules.


...oh crap!

RuleZ SchmoolZ! Nah, I understand. Jayne, could we move the whole thread over to Drills and Amusements? Mostly because I want to read a poem by you that contains the word "skanky" (It rhymes--twice-with "hanky-panky"). Hmn: Frankly, Mrs. Shankley, your hanky-panky is skanky.

oh snap!

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Right-o. I've just got in from going to the cinema and it's almost midnight. Give me a few minutes and I'll move this thread to D & A, where everyone can have even more fun! :)

Jayne

Away we go . . . Bad poems using our favourite words.

Looking at some people's favourite words, I'll bet they're now wishing they chose simpler ones! Haha. That'll teach yer!

Jayne