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, [...]
Words I Love
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Category Archives: Sounds like its meaning
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 [...]
Nomz
Oh I love you, nomz. Love love love. And I’m a fucking DUDE. A big dude. You probably wouldn’t fuck with me unless you were a still bigger dude and then I feel sorry for you because it must be hard to find jackets. But I still love this word and I’m so happy the internet [...]
Raw
“Raw” is the rawest word I know. “Raw” is intense. For a word with no hard sounds, it still sounds hardcore. Its origins are no less astonishing, with connections to Latin, Greek, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European, Old Norse, Old Irish, Sanskrit, and Slavic. The need to describe bloody, exposed and uncooked flesh goes back to the dawn [...]
Tintinnabulation
Tintinnabulation is the ringing our sounding of bells. There is, of course, no reason you would ever actually say “tintinnabulation” when it takes three times as long as just saying “ringing”. Why this word is still around is a mystery, but it has a simple and direct etymology from Latin, so it may simply be [...]
Shit-Ton
A shit-ton is an extremely large quantity of something. It has not yet been added to any respectable dictionary that I can find, but is not an uncommon expression to see. My guess is that this word is a conflation of “ton” and “shitload”, and doesn’t appear to have been around for very long. It [...]
Barf
We have plenty of words for regurgitation in English: Throw up Vomit Puke Upchuck Hurl Spew Blow chunks Cough up Heave Spit up And for such a wonderfully repugnant activity, it’s great to have so many words at our disposal. But “barf” is the king. Besides representing both the action and the product of regurgitation [...]
