Monday, October 02, 2006

Words that allure

Words have a strange magic. I like words that take time to be said - a word with a weighty meaning that takes time to say, is pon-der-ous and requires effort to grasp fully makes the effort of speaking worthwhile. This occured to me while I was driving on a beautiful road today.

I thought of the word pro-li-fic. Such a delicious word - you can roll it over and over again in your mouth. I thought that's what I want to be with my blog - pro-li-fic.
This led me to the word pro-li-x. I hope none of the blogs are prolix!! Rather, I would prefer them to sc-in-til-lla-te. And not ob-fus-cate matters.

A short and sweet word that I admire is hock (a type of wine - not to be confused with hawk). It is sharp and immediately brings to mind the assertiveness of a stodgy Englishman asking for his favourite drink!
A colleague of mine once used ‘bl-ud-geon’ to describe the style of a batsman. This is a cool word – it immediately brings to mind violence and crudity.

Some non-English words are also my favourites. For example – zeitgeist. Very apt word for describing the ‘spirit of the times’. Also scha-den-fre-ude. Very weighty word - though I doubt if I have ever heard anyone use it (or ever will). I think one word that truly is unique is wanderlust. A more apt name for this malaise is impossible to find - I think it is the 'wander' in the word that clinches the issue. For example 'travel-lust' would be nowhere as powerful.

Another German word that I find quite funny is 'putsch'. Although the consequences of one are terrible, the feeling I get on hearing it is as if I have stepped on some horrible bad smelling gooey substance. Ugh!!

I hope this post brings out the quint-es-sen-tial beauty of words and does not sound like so much so-phis-try :-)

3 comments:

Alam said...

Boss desi words mey ek sahi waala hai...jo ki unlce ney IIMB ki vocab mey permanently bitha diya hai

BHASAD....

very nice ...can be used in many situations ...very much like the universal fillers - MC and BC but much less offensive and a delight to the ear

Anonymous said...

won-der-ful piece !
v

Anonymous said...

my favorite word is 'serendipity'...

like stumbling on a beautiful blog when browsing arbitrarily...

-A