Yada Yada Yada

Words. I love words. I have always enjoyed playing with words --- stringing them into sentences, paragraphs, verses, poems, essays, stories, and (someday) into novels.

 

I love the sound of them on my lips. It’s so much fun forming them by puckering your lips or opening your mouth wide or baring your teeth in a wide grin-like way or by rolling your tongue!

 

I love discovering new words --- their meanings and their etymology. I even love coming up with my own words! Who knows? Maybe one day one of my new words makes its way into Webster’s or Oxford’s dictionaries. That’s if I can remember what my newly-invented words are. More often than not, I forget them a few moments after I’ve used and explained them. Ah well…

 

Anyhoo… I have a whole bunch of favorite words like odious (which means hateful or abhorrent) because of the way it sounds when you say it. So hoity-toity, snooty, and nasal. Very Regency English. It’s fun! “What an odious man he is, don’t you think so?”

 

Then, there’s bollocks (which actually means to make a mess of or to destroy, but has become some sort of British expletive), and bullocks (which means castrated bull in plural form). And either of them can be made into expletives! How lovely is that?

 

How about tizzy (which means to be in a state of nervous agitation or confusion) and titter (which, to those with less lascivious minds, actually means a high-pitched giggle)? Putting both words in the same sentence makes me grin. “She was tizzy enough to make her titter at every little thing that odious man said.”

 

I can actually go on and on with the words that I love, whether it be for their sound or spelling or meaning, but it would take forever and a day to finish. (When did we switch from etcetera, etcetera to yada, yada, yada? Hmmm… Yada, yada sounds fun though.)

 

However, there are words (or phrases) that I don’t really like. Take for example, sort of. It’s never quite there, is it? Like it is, but it isn’t. It’s such a so-so phrase that gives off a so-so vibe. It’s like it’s got an incomplete thought or something. Sort of. See! It makes me impatient.

 

Or what about when people use irregardless?! To explain my annoyance with the use of this word, let me quote the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. “Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.” Case closed.

 

But really… It’s not just about the words. It’s the power that words have to evoke sentiments, feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas… greatness! Words, when strung together like beautiful Christmas lights, can move a person to do, to feel, and to think about things. You can wax lyrical or turn prosaic in a matter of seconds just by using the right words.

 

In the English language there are a lot of powerful words, but I think the top three would probably be: I, love, and you. (What do you think, Mr. Darcy?)