Let me take you on a short mental journey. Imagine a desert on a hot afternoon (are there any cold afternoons in the desert??). Anyway, picture a little oasis deep in the heart of said hot desert. Sand dunes all around, rippling gently like they seem to in the movies.
A group of Tuaregs, heavily bandaged…erm… turbaned, as is their way. They are dressed in deep blues and dusty blacks. They have had their fill of water, and filled up their pouches to take with them, they are only waiting for their camels to finish drinking. They are trespassing. This oasis belongs to another…erm… clan?? of Tuaregs and they know it. Unbeknownst to them, a sentry from the owner-Tuareg clan sneaks off to alert the others. Just minutes later, a group of five Tuaregs (I love this word, FYI) approaches, balanced easily on graceful, beautiful horses, riding hard and raising up dust (what else would they raise up?!)
The trespassers say nothing; they know they have been caught with their…erm… flowing robes down. They gather up their things and call their camels to them, their eyes wide and fearful. They had thought they would escape unscathed.
The leader of the pack jumps down from his mount, venom in his eyes and his mouth squeezed in a snarl. He approaches the trespassers huddled together, close to their camels, shrinking back surreptitiously. Making a sudden bold decision, the leader of the trespassers steps forward, chest puffed out, eyes challenging, taunting even.
The rightful owner steps forward quietly, fearlessly. In a flash, he unsheathes his sword, brandishes it long enough for the sun to glint wickedly off it, then places the very tip at the base of the scoundrel’s throat.
Filled with contempt and anger, he spits out a single word:
“Infidel.”
I rest my case.
*bowing to deafening applause*
P.S.
OK, so I’m too excited to rest my case. Even the Bible agrees with me (kinda….)
1Tim, 5:8
But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
You see??!
P.P.S.
I’m not sure if the Tuareg people actually ride horses. If you have a problem with me saying they do, though, kindly go and sit down inside bush and read newspaper small.
P.P.P.S.
What’s your favourite word?
Cheers, darlings 🙂
Twenty-Something Tuesday
While English is widely recognized as one of the most ridiculous and contradictory languages of all time ever, some words (many of which we obviously borrowed from other cultures) are particularly satisfying. Here are the 20 best words we at Literally, Darling could come up with.
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Allele – write it in cursive and you’ll see.
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Persnickety – It has a somewhat negative connotation, but just saying the word makes us smile.
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Charming – Charming is a charming word, it’s like liquid gold in word form.
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Bubbly – Even saying “bubbly” makes you feel bubbly and excited.
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Claptrap – Simply because it’s fun to say.
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Magic – Magic is just so magical, it’s a really evocative word.
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Effervescent – Bright, happy, effervescent is just like its definition and another good word to write in cursive.
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Spectre – Slightly creepy and spooky but deeper than say, “ghost.”
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Incorporeal – Again, a tiny bit creepy but it gives you the sense of bordering on another spirit world.
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Cafe – While it’s a French word, not English, cafe is just the perfect word for an eating place. Who wouldn’t want to go eat at cafe?
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Vorpal – Not technically a real word except according to Lewis Carroll, it still sends shivers up your spine.
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Lightning – It’s a sharp, jagged word that perfectly summons visions of lightning to mind.
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Sea – It’s simple, it’s sweet and it sounds so much nicer than “ocean.” It’s a much more romantic, fairy tale type of word.
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Autumn – Why do people use “fall” when they have a word like “autumn?” I don’t understand.
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Clever – Reminiscent of Hermione Granger, “clever” is more than just intelligent it means you also know how to use it.
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Crikey – needs to be brought to American vernacular ASAP.
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Strumpet – It’s the best way to insult/confuse someone.
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Fisticuffs – Cause I’ve always wanted to have a legitimate reason to use it.
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Anthropomorphic – It’s a one word we use all the time, even incorrectly, because we love the way it sounds.
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Fuck – There, we said it. It’s so versatile, in all its forms, and while it can perhaps be overused, it’s expressive and satisfying as hell.
What are some of your favorite words? Tweet us at @litdarling and let us know!
A man, his blog, and an epic adventure in lexicographic awesomeness
Ted McCagg is a creative director in advertising in Portland, Oregon. In his spare time, for the past five years or so, McCagg has been keeping a blog,»Questionable Skills» — the content of which consists almost entirely of drawings, some of them the bracket-style rankings that are a familiar feature of March Madness.
A few months ago, McCagg began using his blog and his bracket system to answer a question: What is the best word ever? Not the funniest word or the most erudite word or the most whimsical word … but The Best Word, full stop. What if, you know, the scallawag could eke out a thingamajig that would help him select the least milquetoast morsel from our linguistic smorgasbord?
Today, McCagg has answered his question. The best word ever — according to deep lexicographical research, science, taste, and common sense — is this: diphthong.
![[optional image description]](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/science/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-13%20at%201.48.30%20PM.png)
Ted McCagg
McCagg got the idea for the project, he told me, while he was sitting in a restaurant. «I was listening to a few people talking at a table near me (I’m a chronic eavesdropper) about their least favorite words,» he explains. «The requisite ‘moist’ and ‘panties’ came up, each met with the collective ‘ewwws.'» It occurred to McCagg how passionately people feel about words — not only in terms of their hatred for certain words (underpants, slacks), but also in terms of their admiration for others. «I started thinking about the words that I loved,» McCagg says. «Ubiquitous. Kiosk. And yes [your correspondent’s personal preference among the choices], Hornswoggle.»
At first, McCagg was going to explore English’s lexicographic wonderment via a simple, single bracket. He’d choose his favorite words, and whittle them down from there. «But once I got into it,» he says, «I had much more than the usual eight that I fit into a bracket. So I expanded it to have each letter get its own bracket.»
How did McCagg decide which words, out of the hundreds of thousands we’ve dreamed up, deserve inclusion? «Hornswoggle» is a given, obviously … but what about the others?
«I read the dictionary,» McCagg says. «And picked out about 20-30 great words for each letter.» He based those selections on a couple of factors. «For me, it has to be something you’ve heard. Something that sounds fun. Something that’s fun to say. Basically, something, should you ever come across it in day to day life, you stop and think, ‘I love that word.'»
From there, though, things got trickier. What actually makes a word great? How do you determine that «zephyr» is more delightful than «zaftig»? How do you decide that «isthmus» is just slightly less awesome than «kerfuffle»?
«The brackets were my opinion only (with some help from my wife),» McCagg says. And «I tend to gravitate towards words that, like I said, you rarely come across. ‘Fuck’ was the most problematic. It’s an awesome word. And it even got its own bracket. But in the end, it felt too everyday to win.»
Then again, challenges like that have been part of the point. «It’s been amazing the amount of opinions and conversations this has started,» McCagg says. «People love words, as it turns out. It’s quite heartening. One of the best compliments has been from a teacher who said he thought it would be a great thing for him to assign to his English students.»
So why, in the end, «diphthong? Which is also to ask: Why not «hornswoggle»?
«That was a tough call,» McCagg concedes. But «that silent ‘h’ in diphthong made all the difference.»
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Managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.
Whether you think the title of this week’s column is exaggeration or hyperbole, you’re probably right. The words mean approximately the same thing. But as Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” Knowing a bit about the two words’ histories could help you rhetorically catch lightning in a bottle instead of just a glowing beetle.
Exaggeration
The Latinate prefix ex- can mean a number of different things. Most often, it means “out from” (as in exclaim), but we use it in English a lot to indicate “former” (ex-husband). It can also indicate “completely, thoroughly” as in excruciating, exasperating, and — to get to the point — exaggerate.
The English exaggerate traces back to the Latin verb aggerare “to heap up, form into a heap” — originally in a physical sense. Exaggerare, then, indicated “to thoroughly (or overly) heap up” and, in a metaphorical sense, “to increase in significance.” By the early 16th century, that word’s past participle, exaggeratus, had given us the English exaggerate and its various forms.
At the time, though, the primary sense of the word was simply “to accumulate,” but recorded examples of the word meaning “to overstate” have been found from as early as the 1560s.
Hyperbole
Though hyperbole came through Latin to find its place in English, it traces back to Greek. Hyper- is a fairly common prefix meaning “over, beyond” (think hyperactive kids), and the bole comes from ballein, a verb meaning “to throw.” (Ballein is also at the root of ballistics.) This idea of “to throw beyond” bears a certain physicality to it, but as far back as Classical Greece, in works by Aristotle and other philosophers, the word indicated not a physical throwing but a rhetorical device.
If there is a difference between exaggerate and hyperbole, it’s that link to rhetoric: Hyperbole was — and to many still is — a technical term from literary analysis and speech-writing to describe the specific effect of overstating something’s size or importance. Exaggerate is a more general-purpose word.
But before you think that usage line has been drawn in permanent ink, know this: Merriam-Webster Dictionaries defines hyperbole as “extravagant exaggeration.”
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Last year, an advertising executive named Ted McCagg embarked on a whimsical endeavor: Using a bracketing schematic like that employed to record the outcome of athletic tournaments — in which, in each iteration, the number of selections displayed is reduced by half according to some criterion, until only one choice remains — McCagg subjectively selected the best word ever.
McCagg’s Final Four?: diphthong (two vowel sounds in one syllable), gherkin (a type of cucumber, or the vine from which it grows) hornswoggle (a hoax, or to hoax), and kerfuffle (a disturbance).
Is there any practical use for this exercise? I see it as an entertaining vocabulary-building activity: Brainstorm any number of interesting words, whether you know their meaning or not. Subject them to match-ups, two words at a time, and select the one you favor on whatever merits — definition, euphony, or some ineffable quality (I like euphony and ineffable). Repeat until you have a winner, then resolve to learn the word’s meaning if you don’t know it already, and use it in your writing.
There are no losers in this game: The runner-up simply takes its place in line, followed by the favored term in the duel between the no. 3 and no. 4 seeds and then by the runner-up in that contest. Try to use each new front-runner as it is identified.
Organize a tournament with a circle of friends (in real life or online), a writing group, or a class. Make submissions anonymous, match them up randomly, and have the participants vote on their favorite word in each pair, which then advances to a run-off with another favored word.
Perhaps this activity seems silly. After all, maybe the writing you’re paid for is about finance or technology, or you produce marketing content. However, I doubt you work in a kerfuffle-free milieu, and hornswoggling may occur betimes (I like milieu and betimes), but you can apply your best-word-ever efforts to specific jargon and vocabulary.
Oh, and McCagg’s best word ever? Diphthong.
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«Gherkin» — I like saying it. It’s vaguely Indian sounding. «Kerfuffle.» That’s just fun, with so many F’s packed into three syllables. «Diphthong» is sly because it’s hiding a silent H, the H right after the P; it’s there, but you wouldn’t know it. And «hornswoggle?» Just hearing it, I’m on the deck of a frigate, there are seagulls soaring above, and someone is playing a jig.
One of these four words, the «Final Four» in Ted McCagg’s «Best Word Ever» contest, became a champion this week.
You may or may not agree with McCagg, creative director of an ad agency in Portland, Ore., but it’s fun to watch him sort through his candidates, words he loves. He began (you can find the whole contest on his blog, and there’s an excellent description of his process by Megan Garber at TheAtlantic.com) with an alphabetical round. He and his wife plucked their favorite words out of the air and put them into brackets, a la March Madness. For example, here are their favorite P’s.
Here are their Y’s.
Then the regional winners were pitted against each other, so «kowtow» went up against «kerfuffle,» and «akimbo» fought with «xenophobe.»
«Diphthong» had to anticipate «sphincter» in the later rounds. No doubt at some sports bar in Las Vegas, there were folks betting for «onomatopoeia,» and against «eke» …
… until finally, «hornswoggle,» my personal favorite, for some reason was edged out by a word that describes two adjacent vowel sounds occurring in the same syllable.
The winner, the Best Word Ever, is «diphthong.»
Why «diphthong?» Could it be a subliminal suggestion of sexy underwear? No, Ted told TheAtlantic.com. It was the H. That silent H, he said, «made all the difference.»
An unscientific contest with a pleasing result
By R.L.G. | NEW YORK
ARNOLD ZWICKY and Jan Freeman have pointed to Ted McCagg’s blog, which has been hosting a «Best Word Ever contest». That there seemed to be no rules, no criteria and apparently no «contest» except for Mr McCagg’s own choice is no matter. Brackets of competing words like like whirligig and scalawag and zydeco and angina have faced off in a gradually narrowing contest over the course of months. The entrants seemed to be chosen for the sheer fun of saying them (angina and xenophobia being unpleasant, otherwise).
Today, the winner was announced. Pleasingly, it was a linguistic term. But competition is nothing without controversy. Did the winner deserve its title? The word is fun to say, but its meaning is fairly pedestrian. I’d have liked chiasmus or catachresis to get a shot. In fact, there could have been a whole bracket of Greek-derived language-related words that are fun to say: deixis, allophone, synecdoche…
Of all the words out there, what would you have voted for?