cool words

[wickedcestus]

@MoH

verdant

Melville uses the word “verdure” a lot, which I find charming. It’s a little bit too quaint to use in my own writing, though.^[1]

Quaint is a nice word, too. It really suits its meaning.

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1. EDIT: I just checked and the word “verdure” does in fact appear in the current draft of my next novel. We’ll see if it makes the final cut. ↩︎

[Bonsai]

@wickedcestus

It really suits its meaning

this is a difficult concept to pick apart for me but i feel the same way about the name of the seasons winter summer autumn and spring

autumn especially matches perfectly but its hard to explain why. i feel like thats just an example of a word doing its job really well.

what would be a good an example of the opposite thing?

[MoH]

misspelled
pulchritude
indefinable

[MoH]

@Bonsai see here for more: Grelling–Nelson paradox - Wikipedia

[wickedcestus]

Lugubrious is a word that I don’t think sounds at all like it means.

[connrrr]

Cremated ashes are interred in a columbarium, also called a cinerarium.

I was just looking these words up because they weren’t already in my vocabulary. I was going over the different grave/cemetery-adjacent words in my head trying to find something for “where ashes go”:

• ossuary
• crypt
• tomb
• necropolis
• mausoleum

which are all cool words in their own right.

[MoH]

ossuary and necropolis are great. i suggest adding churchyard to your list for a more bucolic flair

[connrrr]

I remembered to turn this trackpad feature on thanks to your thread @NoJoTo.

[connrrr]

Also, I’ve always loved the French word for scarecrow: épouvantail (AY-poo-vaan-TIE). It’s fun to say over and over again.

[NoJoTo]

now you’ve reminded me that it exists!

[Bonsai]

one i like from french also: quelque-chose

correlates nicely with the spanish phrase “cualquier cosa”

[wickedcestus]

I like the word “hurly-burly.” There’s a part in Journey to the West where two demons show up named Hurly-Burly and Burly-Hurly.^[1]

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1. no idea what this is in the original, but an inspired translation in any case ↩︎

[connrrr]

Yeah that one’s great!! I like when it’s said real quick too like que’que chose.

[Bonsai]

when i was little my older sister convinced me that “embarazada” (pregnant) translated to “embarassed” in english.

pretty sure I confused some english speakers with that one at some point. to be fair those two words are incredibly similar.

[MoH]

it is nuts that “hurdy gurdy” is the name of a real instrument (maybe that’s where they got the translated name?)

[phylaxis]

oubliette!

[phylaxis]

i love reduplication! it’s not nearly as common in english as it is in, say, japanese or chinese, but we still have hoity-toity and hurly-burly etc.

ylang ylang is super fun to say too

[MoH]

okay i didn’t realize hurly burly was an actual word. strike my hurdy gurdy remark from the record. i am the donkey of the day.

[connrrr]

I learned that word from FFXII. Speaking of, there’s a game full of cool words:

[safety_lite]

Sounds like a Decemberists concert in here!

I really like buon in italian. I like how it flows so nicely into accompanying words in some common greetings — buongiorno, buona sera, buona notte