THE BEST AND FAVORITES WORDS
I get a kick out of words. Today I’ve put together two collections to get you interested (as I was) in focusing on good ones.
Recently, I discovered a book on the overflowing bookshelves in my office that was published 15 years ago, titled The Best Words by Robert Hartwell Fiske. The author, a seeming expert on the subject, sets out to call your attention to over 200 first-rate “words you actually will have occasion to use”. (He distinguished these from such weird words as “infrendiate” and “doromaeognathous” that “you might encounter only at insipid cocktail parties where one person tries to impress or, as likely, insult another.”)
I found a number of the words he includes to be appealing, and I’ve selected 10% of them (along with their brief definitions) to pique your interest. Let me know what you think of these 20.
As for the second exercise, I noticed an ad on the back page of Fiske’s book for another 2011 volume titled Favorite Words of Famous People, compiled by Lewis Burke Frumkes. Although it sounded interesting, it proved to be out of print. However, my intrepid associate managed to snare a rental copy at his local library. I’ve selected a number of interesting “favorite word” choices from a variety of authors and other contributors.
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So here are my picks out of Mr. Fiske’s favorite word choices (along with the definitions he provided).
ABSTEMIOUS
1. eating and drinking in moderation. 2. Sparingly used.
ALACRITY
1. Cheerful willingness, readiness, or eagerness. 2. Liveliness, enthusiasm.
ASSUAGE
1. To make milder or less intense; to alleviate or ease. 2. To satisfy or relieve; appease. 3. To quiet, calm, or soothe.
BAUBLE
1. A showy, usually cheap, ornament; trinket; gewgaw.
BENIGHTED
1. Overtaken by darkness or night. 2. Unenlightened; morally, intellectually, or socially ignorant.
BESTIAL
1. Of or relating to beasts; beastly 2. Brutal or savage. 3 sexually depraved. 4. Lacking intelligence, reason, or refinement.
BOWDLERIZE
To remove words or phrases from a book that are considered offensive or indecent; expurgate.
CONCUPISCENT
1. Having strong desires or appetites. 2. Lustful, sensual.
DIAPHANOUS
1. Delicate or translucent. 2. Fragile or insubstantial.
EBULLIENT
1. Enthusiastic; lively or high-spirited. 2. Boiling or bubbling.
FASTIDIOUS
1. Having or requiring meticulous attention to detail; excessively particular. 2. Difficult to please.
FULMINATE
1. To utter a scathing verbal attack or denunciation. 2. To explode or detonate violently.
HUBRIS
Excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
IMBROGLIO
1. A confusing or complicated situation; embroilment. 2. An intricate plot. 3. A complicated or embarrassing misunderstanding or disagreement. 4. A confused mass.
INSOUCIANCE
Lack of concern; indifference.
LISSOME
1. Lithe or lithesome; flexible; supple. 2. Having the ability to move with ease; limber; agile.
NEFARIOUS
Extremely wicked; abominable; villainous.
OBSTREPEROUS
1. Noisily defiant; unruly; 2. Aggressively boisterous; clamorous.
RAPSCALLION
1. A rascal; a scamp; a rogue. 2. A disreputable, dishonest person.
REDOUBTABLE
1. Arousing fear: formidable. 2. Commanding respect or reverence; eminent.
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Now here are the favorite words of 34 (of the 250) contributors to Frumke’s book.
1. SOME AUTHORS’ CHOICES
JAMES CLAVELL. “My favorite words . . . Once upon a time . . .”
DAVID MORRELL. “My favorite words are those with which every story I tell begins in my mind. I never fail to experience a rush of emotion as they occur to me. Optimistic and uniquely human, they express our capacity for wonder, our ability to create. I’ll be walking down a street or sitting at my kitchen table, watching a movie or reading a newspaper, and the words suddenly come unbidden to me. “What if?” a voice inside me announces. “Suppose A did B. Suppose this happened to C. Suppose D didn’t know about E and . . . Yes, What if? Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.”
MARY HIGGINS CLARK. “My favorite word is memories. It always brings back the glad and sad of all the yesterdays, the salad days, the solemn and hilarious days, the bitter and the sweet days, the hectic and the neat days. “Memories,” the word. That is the DNA of a writer!”
RICHARD PANEK. “I don’t know about favorite words, but I love starting sentences with but or and – words you’re not supposed to start sentences with.”
MICHAEL CONNOLLY. “I don’t know if it’s that I was influenced by Steve McQueen in Bullet, but [my character] Harry Bosch is relentless as a bullet. He’s a man of few words. he reacts by nodding, so “nodding” ends up in all my books. I had an editor who pointed out that Harry nods too much. In fact in one book he nodded 243 times.”
DAN GREENBURG. “Basically. Since I was a senior in college, whenever I’ve wished to parody the fatuous, the pretentious, or the pedantic, I have interjected the word ‘basically’ into almost every phrase. Needless to say, I also interject the word ‘basically’ whenever I’m being fatuous, pretentious, or pedantic myself.”
2. THE SOUND OF CERTAIN WORDS
BEL KAUFMAN (author). “Cozy. It never fails to make me think of fireplaces and warm blankets and nestling someplace, curled up, snug and warm, with a book or an apple or both. The sound itself is a cozy one; the o round and friendly, the z easy on the tongue. It almost sings.”
WILLIAM ZINSSER (author). “My favorite words, which I spend a lot of time rummaging for, are hundreds of simple, vivid replacements for words that are just too dull to give writing a sense of freshness. Brazen, for example. Used instead of ‘bold,’ not only does it take the reader by surprise with this piquant z, but its sound perfectly conveys its meaning. A brazen scheme is more than merely bold; listen and you’ll probably hear a mountebank.”
SUSAN NAGEL (author). “Pamplemousse, which means ‘grapefruit’ in French, because when you say ‘pamplemousse,’ your lips form a kiss and it tickles!”
ERICA JONG (author). “Breath is my favorite word today. It is like ‘flesh,’ but more ethereal. Like “breast,” but even warmer and moister. Like love, it makes us rise. It begins with lips together, but it ends with lips open and the tongue touching the palate’s arch. All of life is in this word. And it rhymes with nothing but ‘death.’ That should tell us something.”
MARIO CUOMO (former governor). “My favorite word is one I made up, Insinuendo. It combines the power of insinuation with that of innuendo.”
ALBERT ELLIS (psychologist). “Meshugge – crazy, mixed up, addled. I love this word because it aptly describes practically all of my psychotherapy clients, because most of them nicely accept this description, and because they particularly accept it as being highly descriptive of their parents, close relatives, and intimate friends. Saying someone is crazy is often offensive: describing them as meshugge rarely is.”
3. WORDS WITH OPPOSITE MEANINGS
FREDERICK MORTON (author). “My favorite word is cleave. It means “to adhere to firmly and closely.” It also means “to divide by a cutting blow.” (Definitions from the current Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.) The word haunts me because it reflects the paradox to which we life-hungry mortals are born.”
JEANNE CAVELOS (author).” I love the word faux. I first really learned to appreciate this word watching the home-shopping channels, which addicted me for many months. In their glamorous parlance, vinyl became faux leather and cut glass became faux diamonds. The word itself is deceptive; it doesn’t look the way it sounds. And when you insert it before a noun, that noun ends up taking on the exact opposite meaning.”
4. GOOD WORDS TO USE
RICHARD JENRETTE (businessman). “I like the word perceived for some reason. It implies a mystical power to see things not clear to others. If you “perceive” something to be true, no one can argue. If you say something is true, you’ll get an argument.”
ANNE BERNAYS (author). “My three words are – fat, old, [and] conceited. They belong together and are examples of the kind of straight language I admire and mourn the loss of. All are routinely euphemized, as in ‘obese,’ ‘overweight,’ ‘husky,’ ‘aging,’ ‘elderly,’ and some form of (yuck) ‘senior citizen,’ ‘narcissistic,’ ‘entitled,’ – ‘self-absorbed.’ Why can’t we call things by their true names?”
DAVE BARRY (humorist). “I’m very partial to weasel which improves all thoughts. For example ‘Spiro Agnew was vice-president from 1969-1973’ is weak. Much better is ‘Spiro Agnew was vice president from 1969 through 1973. What a weasel’.”
TOM BODETT (author) “. . . And then there’s just the sounds of words that sound like what they are. The word pester. Have you ever had somebody pester you? It sounds exactly like what it is. It’s a wonderful word to say.”
5. SERIOUS STUFF
NORMAN ARNOFF (New York caterer), quoting Justice Benjamin Cardozo: “Justice – a term of aspiration which motivates lawyers, jurors, and judges to do what is morally right and fair when the text of the law is not a clear guide. More often than not the law is not clear.”
JAMIE MALANOWSKI (author). “My favorite word is yes. It is a word of intimacy, enthusiasm, agreement, permission, encouragement, excitement, vision, triumph. ‘No’ is a necessary word, wise to the world’s vicissitudes. Most of the world’s troubles come from a failure to say ‘no’ at the right time, but most of my regrets come from not having the courage to say ‘yes’ more often.”
ANDREW VACHSS (author). “Evil is my favorite word because its very existence is denied by entire professions, including social work. Everybody is sick, and sick is confused with sickening, so when somebody does something utterly abominable, instead of looking in a mirror and saying that’s evil, we say, ‘Well, that’s sick,’ and we can understand it. We’re the only species that ever existed in the history of the world that allows predators of our own kind.”
6. A LITTLE COMEDY
FRANCESCO SCAVULLO (fashion photographer).“My favorite word: ‘Shittheworldisfullofit’. That’s one word.”
PHYLLIS DILLER (comic). “In my work as a stand-up comic, I must use monosyllabic words, ugly shock words. The operative joke word must end the gag and hopefully be a one-syllable word ending with an explosive consonant, as in butt.”
WENDY WASSERSTEIN (playwright). “Coney Island, because I have no idea why ‘island’ is pronounced ‘eyeland.’ Shouldn’t that be the Pearle Vision Center and not a spot of land amidst the water? But I suppose it’s better than being an ‘isthmus,’ which sounds like a decongestant on holiday.”
A.M. ROSENTHAL (columnist).
PRESIDENT TO SECRETARY OF STATE: “Who thought up this Bosnia plan?”
SECRETARY; “I did, sir.”
PRESIDENT: “Well, I’ve seen some ridiculous plans, but you can bet your sweet patootie
this one is really cockamamie.”
7. MISCELLANEOUS
RICHARD LEFRAK (real estate developer). “My favorite words are No Vacancy!”
ELAINE MARKS (author). “Precious, luxurious, tedious, voluptuous, gorgeous, fabulous, fractious, serendipitous, posthumous, joyous, polymorphous, ubiquitous. Of course, I noticed immediately that they all end in ous, and that this suffix, which is the ending of many adjectives, means ‘full of: abounding in: having: possessing the qualities of’ (Webster’s).”
RICHARD JOHNSON (editor). I love the word bogus. It’s better than ‘phony,’ or ‘fake,’ or ‘faux’. It’s even better than ‘claptrap’, ‘poppycock’, and ‘horsefeathers’.”
RING LARDNER, JR. (novelist). “Misology (hatred or distrust of reason, reasoning or discussion). I believe much of American public opinion is the result of misology.”
KENNETH BATTELLE (hairdresser) “I love curmudgeon as I would like to be one. Maybe I am.”
JOE BOB BRIGGS (humorist). “The most beautiful word I ever heard is estacionamiento. It’s Spanish. After I learned to say it elegantly, musically, I found out what it means: parking lot.”
REGINA PERUGGI (former college president and my good friend). “The first word is unconscionable. Though I rarely use it when I write, I love to say it, for its sound seems to resonate its meaning. So, when I’m absolutely aghast, shocked, or overwhelmed with the injustice of it all, “unconscionable” always seems the most fitting way to express my sentiments. The second word I’ve chosen is as soft in sound to me as the first is harsh. That word is cherish. I like it better than almost any other term of endearment, for the word ‘cherish’ epitomizes for me the feeling of keeping something or someone at the very deepest spot of my heart.”
JOSEPHINE HART (author). “The line that I love and which resonates endlessly with me is, ‘Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door – we never opened into the rose-garden.’ I repeat that line by Elliot over and over in my mind because it’s an astonishing juxtaposition of concepts within a great poetic gift. To have footfalls echo in your memory down a passage that you never took . . . I mean really, language doesn’t get any better than that, does it? It’s brilliant!”
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Well, you may well ask, how about Freund – what’s his favorite word (at least among the 200-odd words
chosen by Fiske). In fact, I do have one, which I’ll introduce by telling you one of my favorite jokes.
A shipment of husbands arrived in heaven. To speed up the processing, St. Peter said,
“I want all the husbands who acted like mice in their homes on earth to form a line on the right. Those who were kings in their own castle, step to the left.”
The men went to their places. The line of henpecked husbands stretched beyond the horizon.
Only one man stood in the other line.
St. Peter asked, “Are you sure you belong on the macho line?”
“I don’t know, but this is where my wife told me to stand . . .”
And my word is . . . . Uxorious (Excessively doting on or submissive to one’s wife.)
Hey, did you ever doubt how I’d come out . . . ?