Tuesday, January 16, 2007

More words I am fond of, as much for their sounds as for their meanings:

Terpsichore

Hexadecimal

Simulacrum (I have only heard it used in the sense of the first meaning though)

Lapidary (Actually I prefer the more figurative meaning; I have heard of prose that is carefully crafted [perhaps even a bit too carefully crafted], referred to as "lapidary.")

Meticulous

Quirk (meaning 1.b. being my favorite and the way I use it most often.)

Cloth-of-Gold (Merriam-Webster.com disavows any knowledge of this being a word, but I KNOW it is. I have read it places. I think I have read it mostly in British books. And yes, it is a real thing that even features in history. So fie on Merriam-Webster).

(And actually, I like "fie on" as a way of cursing or dismissing as well.)

And a word I love as much for what it represents as for its sound, the word that is perhaps my current favorite word, if it isn't too odd to have such a thing:

Spangly.

Ooooo, spangly!

spangly spangly spangly.

I know it's become a bit overused in the blogging world, it seems to be a word a lot of people have adopted to describe shiny things. But for me, "spangly" sums up all kinds of good attributes - it is shiny and happy and silvery and crafted and a little overenthusiastic and Christmas-tree-like. It also bears a faint taste of Britishness to me (And, I notice, once again, the Anglophilia - possibly, Anglomania - I felt in the past is rearing its head again). It sounds like a word one of the women in a P.G. Wodehouse novel would use to describe something - and that is another reason why I love the word, for its non-seriousness. (Sometimes I wish I could step into a Wodehouse novel and become like one of the women in there - without really a worry in my head beyond how to justify buying that darling hat I saw at the milliner's, and what purse and shoes I own that would possibly go with it).

2 comments:

chittavrtti said...

Perhaps in a previous life you were a spangle-maker :) Incidentally, the Cocteau Twins have a song with that title.***CV

dragon knitter said...

fun words! and now blogger is showing the post. go figger.