This word is a total fucking clown. Look at all those silent consonants, just begging to confuse foreigners vainly attempting to understand this ridiculous language. It is pronounced “AP-uh-them” and is the preferred British English spelling to the more common apothegm, which isn’t at all common, except in GRE study guides. In fact, it is [...]
Words I Love
You are currently viewing the category archives of The Reasons
Category Archives: The Reasons
Extemporaneously
Whoever invented this word, he didn’t do it extemporaneously, because this word is totally ridiculous and that’s why I love it. It’s too long, it’s cumbersome, too complicated, and when you use it you’re pretty much guaranteed to end all conversation. You may get your shins kicked and your throat slashed. But your options are [...]
Bunny Rabbit
The other night I was walking home from work, which is after midnight, through the peaceful streets of Cambridge, when I saw a bunny rabbit up ahead in somebody’s yard. And I yelled out “BUNNY RABBIT!” I then proceeded gingerly forward until I was able to address the bunny rabbit on the other side of [...]
Garret
“Garret” is not the prettiest word that ever caught my eyes. There are words that sound similar which are more mellifluous, such as gannet (a beautiful oceangoing bird), and garotte (a lovely word for a method of execution by strangulation; you may have also heard the term “garrote wire”). In the fine words of Dictionary.com: [...]
Lush, and Other Words for Alcoholics
Lush is my favorite word to describe an alcoholic, mainly because it sounds like a person bathing themselves in liquor, as if lush were a portmanteau of liquor and wash. But the more I’ve thought about this word, and thinking is all you do on death row (which I so am on. I murdered, like, [...]
Asinine
As we mentioned over at WordsIHate, these days everything from boogie boarding to buttholes can be called “awesome” (especially buttholes). And correspondingly, everything can also be called “stupid”. “Stupid” no longer means “stupid”, it just means bad. So now we don’t yell out “BAD BABY!” we shout, “STUPID BABY!” but the baby isn’t really dumb, she’s just a [...]
Heinous
Bad is bad, and awful as more bad, and terrible is still badder. Go past unbearable, slip around horrific and atrocious (expialidocious). Long gone are crummy, raunchy, and dreadful. An inch beyond abominable, you’re at the Heinous. There is nothing in the world more heinous than a heinous thing. And while so many words have [...]
Aquiline
Sometimes a word comes along that’s so specific, you have to wonder what the inventors of the word were doing that they even needed it. First, the meaning of aquiline is as follows: of, relating to, or having characteristics of an eagle Lovely. But it isn’t used so often for this as it is used [...]
Cock
To date, I’ve posted about sex, coitus, vag, vagina, and hated words blowjob and pornography. Now it’s time to talk about cock. For my money, there is no better word in English, and maybe in all Christendom, to describe any part of anyone’s genitals, be they man, woman, or gender-neutral. Cocks are powerful. Cocks are large. [...]
Replete
If there is a heroin for word junkies like me, it is “replete”. This word makes me feel so GOOD when I’m using it, and could I shoot it directly into my veins I would. It contains an adorable echoing long-E sound and the playful and flirty diblend P+L (stay tuned for plenipotentiary). And this [...]
