Cellar Door

[bloodyrosemccoy]

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.

Comments

[annotated_em]

What if we took Latin for eight years and don't need to look up the source for fenestrate, eh? *grins*

(Eight years, and all I have to show for it is a fairly impressive vocabulary and a BA.)

[vogtalicious.livejournal.com]

Hands down, 'svenskaholl', Danish for 'mullet'. Literally translates into 'Swedish hair'.

He he he....

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

What resources do you recommend, for Hawaiian? I'm intrigued by it, but haven't found anything casually lying about my local Borders. *wry*

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Sanguine.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure that Fenster comes straight from the latin root that fenestrate comes from, as it means window.

At the moment, I am thoroughly enthralled by the existance of the German word unabzählbarkeit; it means uncountable, and it contains in it an umlaut, two prefixes (un and ab, though I'm not certain what the use of the ab is), and both of the suffixes that turn verbs into adjectives (bar and keit).

I kind of like that when the Germans don't have a word for something, they add prefixes and suffixes and other words until they do have a word for something.

Like the lovely example we were given during orientation program: Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsfrau. The wife of the man who is a captain for the company that organizes steamboat travel on the Donau River.

[killabee886.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, one of my favorite words is: flädermus (pronounced fluttermoose) Swedish for bat. (the animal)

Other favorite's (though certainly not limited to) include:
crock pot: I can not say this word and not smile.
Signing: Bacon and Duck in ASL


As for onomatopoeic words that shouldn't be, "fire" has always been like that for me.

[childthursday.livejournal.com]

Okay, wow. I've never used the word defenestrate and just took a kind of vague contextual meaning. Which usually was never directly associated with windows. I learned something on LJ!

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Tenebrous.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

This week? Coruscate. And reredorter, which literally means "the room at the back of the house" and refers to the monastic latrines. Yeah, we have a lot of pictures of medieval garderobes from our trip to England. Because we're geeks.

[viizou.livejournal.com]

In English: "supple"

In French: "vermeil" (which can either be a bright shade of red or a metal)

In Dutch: "labekak" (slang for "lazy person" - possibly the most phonetically appropriate word I've ever come across, if you pronounce it with the requisite throaty accent)

[evilcresyluna.livejournal.com]

God, I just saw something with fenestrate on a practice test today! IT'S EVERYWHERE! *goes to look up in review book*
Fenestration is the removal of the stapes with a small hole drilled in the footplate, and a prosthesis is connected between the incus and the footplate.
. . . Somehow I don't think it is the same thing!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I've got one book so far: Ka Lei Ha'aheo: Beginning Hawaiian by Alberta Pualani Hopkins, which I got off of Amazon. It's got simple lessons and diaogues, and is designed for classroom OR individual use. I only have the student's edition, so I have no answers to the exercises, but it seems to be working for me. I'll keep an eye out for others, and let you know.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Right, that made the list.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I knew it was "fledermaus" in German. I messed with that when I invented a species of "batcat"--it was more formally known as a "flederkatz." I like that word.

Bats are lucky. They get all the good words.

Another good ASL sign is "llama."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I learned "coruscate" from Star Wars books! But "reredorter" is new and awesome. Thanks!

[kurupira.livejournal.com]

haha, I never knew that the ki-vi class in Swahili is meant for tiny things.. that's pretty hilarious. my personal favorite is "nyanya." every language needs a word that can double for "tomato" and "grandmother."

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

This is an awesome entry! I love hearing your thoughts on words-- both from a synaesthete's perspective and just from a word-lover's perspective. If you get a chance, would you mind cross-posting this over to thelexicon? It would be perfect there!

My own personal favorite word changes on a regular basis. I'm too braindead to think of one right now, but I promise I'll come up with something.

[dreams-cametrue.livejournal.com]

Just one? Sorry, no can do.

Alpaca. Cunning. Even a simple word like "freak" just conjures up an entire dreams' worth of surreal imagery in my mind.

Would it be trite to say that words "speak" to me?

Tom-