A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I love words. I’ve been a talker since I first learned my first word — which was, as I’ve been told by others, “why”. Guess that explains how I got to be the curious person that I became.

I’ve always loved words. I’ve been known to, in the privacy of my office, to just say the same word or phrase over and over because I like the way it sounds, or the way the sound comes over the tongue and between the lips, or because of the image it causes in my mind’s eye. For example, I love some of the French words I learned because that rolled “r” makes my upper palate tingle — which usually means I don’t say the word because I start giggling but still I like it.

So, back on track, today when I came across the link for the 100 Most Beautiful Words in English, I had to check it out. The list contains some of my favorite words: adumbrate, blandiloquent, chiaroscuro, colporteur (the book seller not the wonderful singer), diaphanous (a long word for something so ethereal — a word also on the list), halcyon, inglenook, loquacious, mondegreen, peregrination, scintillate, and surreptitious among other words.

There’s also a list of ten bonus words which has one of my all time favorites — sussurous. I just love the sound of that word. Sigh. Other favorites among the bonus words: syzygy, terpsichorean, and tintinnabulation.

So, check out the list of beautiful words in English. The list has their short definition. There’s some words I’d add and some I think are nice but not worthy of the list but I enjoyed seeing them celebrated on this list.

What’s your favorite beautiful words?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 3:25 am and is filed under CSA, Education, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.