Do any of you other grexers have a fascination for words or a favorite
word.  I think language is interesting and often, humorous.  List your
favorite word and tell why it's your favorite or any humorous things 
about words.

163 responses total.

I guess I'll go first.  My favorite word is sesquipedalian...which literally
means a two foot long word.  I'm also fond of the word apartment because of 
the paradox it represents...why are apart-ments always grouped together?

My favorite word happens to be desanguanation.  It menas something like
draining all the blood from a body, but i just like the way the word sounds.

Item 76 in Spring 1995 agora has been linked to language 73. 

Based on sanguine and related words, my guess is that it is spelled
"desanguinization".

One of my favorite words is "albeit" because it is almost three words placed 
end to end, and still is short enough to use in the letter match game,
albeit not a very good choice.

I also like "recursion", and "recur", but hate "recurse".
This has been documented elsewhere, however.

Well, I like to use "confuzzled" instead of confused a lot.  It just sounds
so much cooler.  =)  Another phrase a lot of people have noticed is when
they ask me how I am.  I usually reply, "Phine as frog hair and neato-peachy
keen!"  It most often gets a smile from them!  =)

@  @
\__/  there you are

   Does anyone remember the word for a battle between frogs and mice?
It starts biobrachy, I think, and its long.  It has to be one of the
weirdest words I've ever heard of.

Well, I don't k now that word but... One of mine is wunnermuffins, but 
that's mostly cause I made it up...  why make up a word if you
don't like it?  I also like the way plethora sounds...

exit
q

 My favorite word is:    DISCRIMINATION!

  I always liked "Antidisestablishmententarianism".....I used to be a spelling
bee champ back in grade school and believe it nor not that one came up once.

On  arelated topic, two newbies asked me what a "grex" is the other day and 
in all the time I've been on I've never thought to find out.  What exactly IS a
grex?  Is it a plant, animal or mineral?  MDW says its latin but I didnt see it
in in a latin dictionary.  Dont tell me its a stupid word that rhymes withchex!

Grex is probably Latin for "addiction"  =)  j/k
One of my other favorites is from my friend James (peacefrg).
"Super-sado-masochistic-expiali-docious!!!"  =)

Being a writer, I'm also intrigued by words. Lately, I've been trying
to get people to look at the roots of words and use them accordingly.
For example, many people use the word "fantastic" when something is
really good.  If you look at the root of the word, however, you'll
notice that it has the same root as fantasy.  That being the case, I'd
say something qualifies as fantastic only when it's so good that it
would qualify as a fantasy.  I know this sounds schoolmarmish, but if
we don't use words properly, pretty soon they'll all come to mean the
same thing, and that would be a shame.

Likewise, awesome and awful should mean the same thing.

My 3 favorite words in the English language are

Burgle
Jowle
And Spork

(I think "sesquipedalian" implies 1.5 feet, not two.)

I don't know that I have a favorite word or anything, but "onomatopoeic"
comes to mind.

In one phase of the mispent portion of my youth, my favorite word was
36oxydo12dimethyl12cyclohexanedicarboxylicacidanhydride. I practiced it
until it rolled trippingly off my tongue. It still does. 

I've always been partial to "facetious", because it has the amazing luck to
include each of the vowels in the English language exactly once, *in order*. 
If you make it "facetiously" you get y, too.

I can`t remember which language, could be Serbocroat, But the word facetious is
considered an extremely rude thing to say, I never found out what it meant
though. I`ve always liked Alabaster and as someone already mentiond plethora I
shall not.

 gems

Just the other day I think I figured out where the word restaurant comes
from.  It sorta sounds like restorant, which makes sense.  re. #17
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK-----organic chemistry...NOOOO!
Sorry....I have to take the MCAT in 8 days.

Re: 21 *comforts luci* one of my best friends is taking the MCAT the same
time as you, and she's been stressing for like a month now, with practice
tests and all... good luck on it!

 One of my favorites is besmirch. I dunno why, but I just like the sound
of it.

If you are studying organic chemistry (or any other academic discipline),
and you have a question you need help with, ask it in the tutoring conference.
There are several Ph.D.s and many other knowledgable folks waiting 
to answer your question.

Thanks, Steve.

One of my favorite words, just for its sound, is "zeitgeist".

re #7 -- the word for a battle between frogs & mice is
"batrachomyomachy".

And, pray tell, where does a battle between frogs and mice occur, so
that the word is needed? Also, while we are at it, how about a battle
between frogs and toads? (No, not between just frogs *or* toads.)

It may come from mythology.  I first saw the reference in a "Thor" comic
book, where Loki turn Thor into a frog and he gets involved in the war.  The
word is a real word, we looked it up in some dictionary, I think the OED.
I just went upstairs to look again, but couldn't find anything with that
beginning.  Now if I just get all of STeve's comic collection cataloged and
into its file cabinets in the next couple of hours I could find it, but as
I have too many other things to do with higher priorities this is unlikely
to occur any time soon :-)

(Grace found it, I think, but I hadn't read this thread & found what she
said too confusing to remember (in the absence of context).  I expect
she'll post it when she gets a chance.)

Rob, "Zeitgeist" has been one of my favorites for a long time, too.  A lot
of German words, for that matter.  (There was this cute poem about a
Werwolf who asked someone to decline him, & then was crushed to find that
"wer" doesn't have plural forms ... )

Smegmomenometer or something like that...
Oh, Also... Smegma

I like the word "thing".

My middle name is "Dithmar" and I have in my possession a history of 
Dithmarschen, which my father gave my mother as an engagement present.
(Dithmarschen was an intermittantly independent country located in the
southwest corner of the Danish Peninsula.)  The book is in German, and I
don't actually read German, so I've been over the years slowly translating
the thing.  The main city of Dithmarschen was Meldorf.  Mr Kamphausen, the
author of my book, claims the name comes from "mellen," which means to
vote or to count, and that this name testifies to Meldorf's importance
as a "thingplatz."  Well, I've never before encountered the word "thingplatz"
in German before.  It looks weird.  Like "thing place" or something.  So
I looked it up in my Oxford-Duden English/German Dictionary.  And to my
surprise, it was there.  But it defines "thingplatz" as "thingplace."

So I got out me OED and looked up "thing."  It turns out that a "thing"
was originally a public assembly, sort of a combination court and 
informal legislative body.  The Grex coop conference, for example, is a
pretty good thing.  This kind of usage still seems to survive ("I've got
a thing at Madison Square Garden tonight").

Anyway, I like finding this kind of thing.

I also like the word, well name, Mr. Snufflupagus.  It rolls off of your
tongue, and is so much fun to say!  =)

Re #27: obviously I wasn't reading closely enough.  But in answer to
Rane's questions, with the expert & her copy of the OED at my elbow:
Batrachomyomachy: the battle of the frogs & mice, a mock-heroic poem
possibly of the Homeric age.  (And then she mutters that "batrach" is
frogs, but she doesn't know whether the Greeks had a separate word for
toads, & that we don't have an English-Greek dictionary which would let
her determine this easily.)

Perhaps in #31 you mean Sphygmomanometer. That is one of the blood pressure
measuring devices. From Sphygmus=pulse and manometer=pressure gauge.

Do not confuse it with a sphygmometer, which just measures pulse, not
blood pressure.

cool word.

Unctuous is very.

A friend of mine really likes "onionsmut".

 Another one of my favorites is-- Ubiquitous. Hope I spelled it right,

Onionsmut brings a tear to my peeping eye.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss