Tuesday I drove three hours to spend time with a friend and meet her beau.
This entry has really nothing to do with my friend, my trip, or her beau. But it has everything to do with the word beau. Who uses the word beau anymore? It's such a delightful word. Where did it go?
Words. Words. Words. I love them all. I love them so much that when a friend says a word I especially love I might stop her and ask her to say the word again. If some people are foodies, I'm a wordie. I just want to savor the taste of a word.
I think about words a lot. I love finding new words. Earlier this year my students were discussing "goat heads" getting stuck in their shoes and I had to tell them I'd never heard of stickers being referred to as goat heads. But who cares if I have to learn new words from 8th graders; any time I hear a new word or an old word aptly used I get a shiver down my back. Today my "new word" for the day was "pestiferous". It was in the following context: "Every cad's paradise! Paternity without strings! No pestiferous pangs of conscience!"*
Not only do I love learning new words. I love teaching new words. I purposefully use "big" words when I teach my 8th graders just because I hope my students will learn them. For example, they are in the habit of asking me if they will get points for certain class activities and I typically respond with, "No, but you are gaining my approbation." I enjoy being more direct and just telling them about words too. Recently they learned the words anarchy and depreciation. Oh, and they learned that compromise is not pronounced: "com promise" but "com pro mise".
I could talk about words forever, but I'm depriving myself of sleep to write this.
So as to my friend and her beau and my trip to see them. We had a good time. We ate some good Indian food and talked a lot (another yeah for words!).
PS Here is just a small list of some of my favorite words:
tarmac
diaspora
assuage
behoove
balmy
assiduously
*The quote is from 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help (Nice book, horrible title).
5 comments:
I remembered when I first encountered the word "proxmity", it was glorious. Or "logistics". :)
Those are delightful words worthy of remembering your first encounter with them.
I especially love the word logistics. I will find excuses to use it!
sigh, balmy i like that word too, hmm, some of my favorites:
affinity
gorgeous
meander
serendipity
crap (if it's a bad word than it's not one of my favorites)
heart
Kimi--I'm glad to see that meander is on your list. :)
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