Favourite Word

I had to look something up in the dictionary earlier and I happened upon a link to ‘Why is Q always followed by a U’. I read the article which was interesting, but by no means life changing, to the right of the screen under ‘Popular Links’ was a link to ‘The Most Beautiful Sounding English Word’. It’s not something I’ve really given a lot of thought too, but now that I do, I find this subject appealing. Who knew people thought about such things.

I had to see what others thought, after all, there are over 650 comments.

Most contributors stick to topic, but invariably least favourites creep in, favourite sounding names and others just try to corrupt the system with sly suggestions of racism and fornication (one of my favourites).

It would seem supercalafragilisticexpealadosious is a favorite despite not actually being an official word. Edward Lear managed to get runcible into the dictionary, so how come after all these years the Mary Poppins classic still hasn’t made it? It may not be in any official tomes, but it has made it in popular culture along with chim-chiminy-ciroo, well maybe not :-)

Other favourites seem to be words with negative connotations, but sound nice as they roll off the tongue: blarg, gynecological, melancholy, narcissistic, bubonic, jezebel, ennui, and insidious.

The favorites that win though are the nice sounding, happy though provoking classics like; angel, love, soliloquy, cornucopia, gossamer, curvaceous, evanescence, hallelujah, succulent, and serendipity.

The least favourites are headed up by: squelch, crusty, wet, merge, wacky, ooze, crotch, excess, cabbage, fart, tax and cancer. Most of the words in this list had negative meanings, no one voted for desire (for example) as their least favourite.

Moist wins hands down though, with loads of expressions of eww, ugh, revolting and vile used to describe it. It appears that a lot of people associate the word moist with yeast infections and humidity, but Angel counteracts that with ‘Moist isn’t a gross word if you put it before CAKE!’ She has a very good point. Dry cake or dry roast beef stick in the mouth without moisture.

Swift got a vote, but according to Elma, it only works ‘ if it’s whispered’.

Personally I’d have to go with for my current favourites: jezebel, fornication, procrastinate, hippopotamus, and awesome.

The words I avoid would be: c**t (always repugnant even if it wasn’t a swear word), phenomenon, and burp.

The comment from Robbie made me laugh hard though, so I’d thought I share it in full.
“‘The best word to say is botulism. It has awful connotations but it jumps out of the mouth like a prizefighter, ready to strike down anything in its way.
‘You can’t eat that candy in church!
Botulism! Of course I can!”’

What are you favourites and least liked?