For the love of words ...

[vaysh]

Sometime the cutest things come up at facebook:

Confessions of a Word Snob

Quote: "It’s O.K. to love words. In fact, it’s probably healthy. They so often love you back." ♥

Any words that are on your snobbish rant list?

xpost: http://vaysh11.dreamwidth.org/850627.html. Comments are welcome on both sites.

Comments

[writcraft]

Great article!

I cringe at any 'management speak' - blue sky thinking, idea showers and the like, although I have been known to talk about 'touching base' and 'close of business' and I sort of hate myself afterwards :D :D

My favourite words...I like 'cellar door' as referenced in Donnie Darko and it's history, namely that it is a word or phrase which sounds beautiful irrespective of its meaning.

I also really like the onomatopoeic nature of the word 'scribble'

[minervas_eule]

“Ah ... a reader-narrowing device.” *LOL* - indeed! But this (the philippica) by chance has been one of the few unusual words that I in fact DID understand without getting my Oxford Dictionary out of the shelf *gg*

[khalulu]

Yeah, ugly jargon in general that makes an impenetrable thicket, but it's particularly sad with gender/queer ideas that might do good in wider circulation but won't get it because they're written in ways that only invite in people who already speak that lingo.

[khalulu]

I don't like the recent use of "gift" as a verb when it only means "give" . Seems to me it used to be only seen in compliments to people's attributes - she was gifted with a sharp wit/ sunny disposition/ ability to compose melodies on the spot/ whatever, with the implication that these gifts came from the gods/fortune/ etc. But now it's a pretentious way to say buy someone a present. Am not fond of "albeit" in speech either, or "impacted" as a verb - reminded me of wisdom teeth or worse for the longest time, though I'm mostly inured (now there's a word I don't think I've ever used before!) to it now.

I had a beginning ESL student who fell in love with the word meticulous (the sound of it, he can't remember the meaning) - it amuses him no end. I've tried to interest him in gregarious, fastidious, and peripatetic, but they haven't stuck.

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to love to say "dubious, highly dubious" and "indubitably". That probably came from Mr. Peabody, a cartoon dog on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

[vaysh]

I have a fondness fo "albeit" (but how to pronounce in actual speech it has me guessing).

He did not fall for "fastidious"? Such a lovely word. Have to look up "peripatetic" - now that's a mouthful.

I am with you on the gift-for-give thing. Don't like.

[vaysh]

peripatetic - what an odd word! A "disciple of Aristotle" and "someone who wanders around".
*puts peripatetic on favourite words list*

[khalulu]

I didn't know about the disciple of Aristotle part. Peripatetic people go on peregrinations! (A lovely word for a Took-lover.)

[potteresque_ire]

That article.... is completely over my head (as in, I don't know enough vocabularies to make sense of it :D). There're bits and pieces that are comprehensible, but in all cases serve as evidence that I am too far off to be snobbish about anything in language!!!!!

I like Zeitgeist as a word. I like the meaning behind the compound German. (Schadenfreude is another one of my favorites *grins*). I think this is my preference for words-I like words that offer more than just a string of letters that give a definition. Philippic ...is nice like that, too, the fun in this type of word formation requires that its history/etymology is known. But I hesitate on liking "philippic" because if I don't know it, it's not just a word that makes no sense, it actually would take my thinking to places that are likely incongruent to the prose around it...

Say.... "Prophet's Op-Ed Contributor Draco Malfoy delivered a philippic in the Prophet on Auror Potter's utter failure in diplomacy, citing examples of poor manners, dreadful fashion sense and troll

[ysilme]

I like words that offer more than just a string of letters that give a definition.
That is a wonderful way to put it! ♥