Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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What’s Your Favorite Word?

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We’re all word people right? So which is your favorite word in the whole wide language? Surely you have one.

Mine is archipelago.

Take it away, word people!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  4. Loquacious says

    Too many for just one word:

    Dearth
    Ubiquitous
    Mayhap
    Salmonella
    Opalescent
    Omnipotence
    Penultimate
    Paraplegic
    Trapezoid
    Zygote
    Polymorphism
    Myriad
    Canny
    Licentious
    Bleak

  7. LindaBudz says

    Took me a while, ’cause I like so many words. But I wanted to add another vote for discombobulate.

    I still remember the first and second times I heard that word … they were exactly a year apart, to the day. And they were both spoken by women as they exited bathrooms.

    My dad and I used to say, “discombooberate” … we thought we were hilarious.

  8. philologia says

    SPIZZERINCTUM:
    N., The energy and will to succeed. I.e., what the Little Engine had.

    SQUIMSHED:
    The word used when none other will suffice. “How was being Maid of Honor when your ex-boyfriend married your mother?”

  10. L.C.McCabe says

    Nathan,
    I have been overanalyzing this question for far too long.

    At first I was thinking you wanted written words, but then there would be the difficulty of trying to avoid being redundant by using a favored word too frequently.

    Then, well, I realized perhaps you wanted to know what words people liked to say aloud.

    After much consideration, I realize that I love saying Yiddish words the best. They have such character.

    schmooze
    schmutz
    schmata
    schlep
    schtup
    and schmuck

    All seem to garnish a phrase.

    And my husband’s favorite word is “spork.”

  11. JRLadies says

    Not certain it’s my favorite word, but it did immediately come to mind:

    Inconceivable!

    (“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”)

  12. Rita says

    Hilarious.

    You have to grin just to say it, and other people start cracking up, too, before they even know what you’re talking about. It’s magical and everyday.

    But archipelago, discombobulated, and perspicacious have long been up there. And ubiquitous, thanks to Charles Dickens.

    I’m astonished to see how many people love my friend’s second favorite word: defenestrate. Her first favorite is palimpsest. That mark on old parchment where you can see something has been erased and written over.

    In Chinese, I like ho hui. Regret. You look at the way it’s written (ho is backward, and hui has word parts for heart and mother, but also reminds me of gray and ash, and ocean). Something about the sound and the sense, and the sight, gives me a shiver. Ho hui.

    I once heard that only 50 or 100 Chinese words get used over and over to make up 80% of Chinese poetry, because they have such poetic force. I’ve always imagined ho hui was one.

  13. lotusloq says

    Oh my! I agree with Erik. How can I pick just one. All the other words will be jealous and might shun me. That would be catastrophic. Haha!

    That said–there have been some excellent ones listed here!

  14. sara says

    I see it’s already here… but that just PROVES what an awesome word it is.

    Phantasmagorical.

    And here’s a great quote demonstrating its meaning in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

    “An opium-eater’s revery is nothing to the phantasmagoria of the sky tonight.” E.K. Kane

  15. Anonymous says

    Junkbox. It has such a complexity of consonant sounds, it may as well not have vowels. Wait, does this qualify as one word?

  18. Anonymous says

    Dear Nathan,

    What funnnn, here, reading favorites!

    Thanks!

    Mine at this moment in this early morning are simple words

    love
    giggle

    🙂