Sunday December 26, 2010

A CHRISTMAS FUGACITY. Here I take a short Xmas break to call your attention to alphaDictionary's "The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English" (h/t Jay Rosen).

I didn't know some of these words, though of course in a few months I'll claim to have used them all in ordinary speech since I was nine. But the really nice thing about the list is that it includes many words we all know -- and yes, "umbrella" is a beautiful word, come to think of it.

There's a humbling aspect, too. I thought "mondegreen" was pretty exotic, but look at the Twitter results. Gasp! Am I like the rest, after all?

What did they miss? I'm very fond of cachexia, tremulous, termagant, and -- probably a good one to use here -- catachrestic. How about you?

UPDATE. Thanks to all contributors in comments, especially those who helped me fall in love all over again with homey old words like flange, kaput, and gonorrhea.