DAnnisms

I love words

I love all the “bad” words, and I worship Henry Miller and Lenny Bruce for embracing them. I love the word, “y’all,” even though I resisted it in my college days.  I love “onomatopoeia,” “euphony,” “cacophony,” “crescendo.” I love songs for their lyrics.

I’ll admit I’ve never liked the word, “plethora,” though. When people say that word, it always sounds like they’re puking. I much prefer the more poetic “cornucopia.” I also have some trouble with hearing the word “placenta” in Live’s “Lightning Crashes.” I don’t know, it’s just yucky. Leave that word to the doctors, not the poets.

I know the power of words and the images they invoke, so I’m not altogether opposed to the notion of political correctness, even if Dan views it as pure and evil censorship. I love to see language evolving as we learn new ways to communicate, but I also like to see where words came from, their context and history.

So, when I found this list of the weirdest words from the Oxford English Dictionary, I “jumped for joy.” See how I did that? I used a cliche bunch of words to share an emotion with you. You didn’t think that I literally jumped for joy, but you understood what I was saying. In actuality I did just the opposite. I found myself laying in the same position on the couch with my laptop atop my lap, reading through every word in the list, sending e-mails to my friends with the link and a few choice exerpts and then sitting even longer to write this blog entry, when I haven’t written here for over two months. So there.