Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Language of Giggles

So in my own clumsical way, something about my last post reminded me of one of my greatest loves in life.

Words.

Yes, A Mom on Spin is unabashedly in love with the English language.  Yeah, sure, English may not be officially listed as one of the snobby Romance Languages, but it tops the list of Giggle ones.  There are countless words in the dictionary that make me smile.  Words like . . .

betwixt

and

akimbo. . .

Oh, and I absolutely adore the word askance. (Truth be told, I've recently discovered that I love any word with an "a" placed in front of it. .  .words like. . . akin. . . aggrieved. . .and aforementioned. Add an "a" to any word and "A" Mom on Spin will be adamantly "b"smirched with it!)


Curmudgeon.  I ask you, is there another language that would have such an appropriate-sounding noun for such a bad-tempered person?   Add to it the fact that you can put the adjective cantankerous in front, and even a cantankerous curmudgeon would be begrudgingly beguiled about the sound it made.

Cahoots!  I, personally, would be debilitatingly delirious if I were decisively in cahoots with someone. (And while we're hovering over the letter "d" for the moment, I also feel the need to tell you that I feel what might be an unnatural attraction to the word debunk.)


If  you're a regular reader of this blog you must know by now that I have been both enthralled and enamored with the words feckin' and fiddler's fart ever since I watched Angela's Ashes for a second time.  Enough said.

Kindred. Only kindred souls would be in cahoots with each other.


And how about some of those big time words like loquacious?  Obfuscate?  Ubiquitous?


Ginormous.  There.  I have used the word ginormous in a sentence.

Did you know that Mr. Webster only officially approved of the word ginormous in 2007?   (Before its entry in the dictionary we were forced to use the equally-giggly humongous in its place.) And this beauty of a word was only able to take up residence in the dictionary after it won Webster's on-line poll of Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary).

And then, like my own clumsical word that set this whole post aflight, there are the whimsically-mish-mashed  words that I absotutely adore in what can only be described as a Suessish kind of way. Words that vocabularians - like moi -  have simply made up because they make us smile. These words, like ginormous, may still be officially classified as neologisms, but they still top the list of my Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary).   Words like. . . .  

Fa-cocked. . . Fer-clooked . . . Fash-muncked. . .

and let's not forget

. . . beautious . . . confuzzeled. .  .schlumped. . . piffulous. .  .schmiglet. . . flusterpated. . .slickery. . .and . . . schlopp. . .

So romance-schmance. . . .here's to the Language of Giggles!




Do you have a neologism to share?  Have at it. . . .