bloodyrosemccoy | Cellar Door

National Tailors Day
Anniversary - D-Day
Flag Day (Sweden)
Memorial Day (Korea)

So last month I started naming planets after jewels, and found that it was absolutely necessary to include one whose name translated to ‘garnet.’ This was imperative, because while I like a lot of jewels, only garnet has the perfect name.

I’ve mentioned before that some words that shouldn’t be onomatopoeic are to me—bottle, swelter, crystal, and shit all sound like what they describe to me. And garnet is definitely in that category—it sounds exactly like a frozen droplet of dark red,* something that its etymology reflects. But somehow it exceeds even the usual tendencies of my onomatopoeia words. Garnet is one of very few words I assign tone to, so that whenever I think it it sounds singsong.** I always get a little sense of pleasure when I say it, or even think it. It’s got a special place in my head, in the small category of Absolutely Spot-On Perfect Words.

That got me thinking of my other favorite words. You saw a few above (I like words that sound like what they are). But it’s not just those. Some words just sound or look cool without being attached to anything—astroblastoma, or photophosphorylation. Some words have great definitions, like defenestrate.*** And some are just funny—for some reason, I believe that toast is the single funniest word in the English language.

I’ve got favorites in other languages, too. Being a linguist has its perks.

Spanish: murcielago, ‘bat.’ It’s just got such a great rhythm to it, although I’m guessing that they don’t translate ‘Batman’ because Hombremurcielago—or worse, el Hombre de los Murcielagos—would be hard to say.
Swahili: Hands down, kiboko, ‘hippopotamus.’ Fun to say, but even better, the ki- at the beginning puts it in the noun class of tiny things.
Japanese: atatakakatta, ‘warm (in the past).’ This is the hardest word to say in the world. The root, atatakai, ‘warm,’ is bad enough, but when you add that bit that makes it past tense, it’s damn near impossible.
Hawaiian: Any word. The more syllables, the better. For an example, I give you ho’okalakupua, ‘to do magic,’ but pretty much any word in it is awesome and fun to say.
ASL: The word for Coca-Cola, which in Utah is still done by faking shooting yourself up with cocaine. Also the generic word for soda, which is just fun to do.

What about you? What’s your favorite word?

*Weirdly, none of the letters in the word is red. I guess it’s the sound all put together.

**Since you ask, it is exactly the tone of the sound effect they play in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island when you pick up a red coin. That sound is, for me, the exact sonic reflection of garnet—both the word and the object itself.

***Here’s one for you. Everyone always laughs about that word, but did you ever wonder whether that de- is a morpheme, and that you should be asking yourself what fenestrate means? I did. But I’m not gonna do all the work for you. You can go look it up yourself.