What are lexicographers’ favourite words?

What is your favourite word? This is one of those questions which lexicographers are always being asked in interviews. Perhaps that’s why, in my experience, so many of them sigh inwardly (or even outwardly) when it comes up. It has always seemed to me that one of the marks of a good lexicographer is that they can find something of interest in whatever word they happen to be working on. Which means that, for many of us, the truthful answer to the question ‘What’s your favourite word?’ is ‘I don’t have one.’ However, the question continues to crop up, and I thought it might be interesting to ask my colleagues at Oxford Dictionaries—most, but not all, of whom are lexicographers—how they answer the question. I certainly got some fascinating responses; a selection of them appears below.

In most cases my colleagues gave reasons for their choices, and for me this is where much of the interest lies: many of them made me realize that there are ways of thinking about, and appreciating, words which had never occurred to me. In a few cases all I have is the word…and some of these are thought-provoking too. (For the record, my own answer to the question—and a strongish candidate for my actual favourite word—is twiffler; I wrote about this in an article for OUPblog.)

‘Well, I currently like quagmire, because of my favourite Family Guy character; also whopper, the name of a fondly-remembered family cat (RIP).’

‘A favourite word of mine is geoduck, because the pronunciation is at such variance with the spelling and consequently demonstrates the basic flaw in syllabification (the division of spellings into syllables).’

‘When asked I say discombobulate, but it’s not necessarily true.’

‘Inflammable is the first word I remember asking “why” about as a child: why does it mean the same as flammable, when you’d expect it to mean the opposite?’

‘As a non-English speaker, I find awesome an awesome word. I don’t have in my mother tongue a direct translation – impresonante is the closest translation, but it is not exactly the same.’

‘Bollocks is a word with a glorious ring to it, which can be incredibly comforting to use in stressful situations; it also has a wonderful versatility: able to mean anything from the very best (“the dog’s bollocks”) to the very worst (“complete, total and utter bollocks”). Given its somewhat risqué literal meaning, it carries with it a cheekily subversive charm: able to shock, but not too much (usually!).’

‘I don’t have a favourite, of course, but I usually come up with something when asked, as it seems poor form not to do so. The one I usually go for is sooterkin – mainly because of sense 2a of the word as given in the OED, which is fantastically ridiculous. I especially like the fact that, according to the etymology, there is no similar term in Dutch. We apparently felt the need to come up with a word for this.’

‘My favourite word in English is numpty, because it somehow conveys exactly what it is. I first heard it when I moved up to Scotland over twenty years ago; now it seems to be fairly widespread in English English, too. In French, my favourite is frimousse, which has no real equivalent in English, but means something like “sweet wee face”.’

‘I’ve had terrible trouble trying to decide what my favourite word is this week.  In the end, I’ve gone for stravaig. I like the sound of it and the idea it captures of wandering around without purpose but with enjoyment. ’

‘I usually inwardly groan at this question, as I don’t think I have one. I’m more interested in how words interact with other words than the word itself. But I have been making a note of words which please me in the hope that I will one day be able to provide an answer. Some recent candidates are wherewithal and penultimate. The first because I’m not sure how its components make up the whole and the second because it gets the job done. I also like swear words as they are usually very flexible and can be used in so many different ways (both grammatically and semantically).’

‘I first saw the word moribund in an article written by a colleague of mine. I’m just surprised at how such state or situation as a whole could be compressed and expressed by just one word.’

‘It took me many years to realize what my favourite words really were, after flirting with a few others in my youth. The words I love are those that describe the English landscape—fell, beck, gill, tarn, crag, dale (with fell being my favourite if I had to choose). I like their simplicity and the fact that they provide a link to our surroundings that has endured for generations—1000 years in some cases. When I’m sitting in an office looking at a computer, thinking of these words makes me happy—they represent escape and freedom.’

‘My usual response is basically “I don’t have one, they are all interesting”.’

‘I like colloquial Scottish words that I associate with my childhood and didn’t think of as ‘real’ words till I was much older. One is tumshie—originally meaning “turnip” but now more commonly, I think, “a daft person, an idiot”. And also risible. I don’t know why, I just like the way it sounds: with the short vowels you can say it in such a fittingly clipped and dismissive way.’

‘My favourite word is suboptimal, because it is a nice euphemism for something that is far away from being good.’

‘My favourite word is one I use with my speech and language therapy students as an example of a “rule-breaker”. I recently had the pleasure of editing the entry for the word spleuchan, which is the only word I’ve ever come across whose British English pronunciation feasibly starts with four consonant sounds (/s/, /p/, /l/, /j/), and hence counters every textbook on English syllable structure. I retain a particular appreciation for smew.’

‘Counterintuitive. I love its higgledy-piggledy/oom-pa-pa rhythm; and I love its suggestion that what you think is probably wrong. (For me, it so often is.)’

‘My experience (and I expect others have it too) is that every now and then you come across a word and think “now that would be just the one to claim as my favourite word”—and then you fail to write it down and quickly forget what it was; and this points to the fact that one actually greatly likes a number of words, even though one can never remember which they are. A word I have liked since before I was a lexicographer (a long time!) is primrose: I like the plant but I also like the sound of it. I’m not sure that it’s my absolutely favourite word, though.’

‘I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s my favourite, but the word I seem to notice more than any other is inexorable—for some reason it always seems to trip me up a bit whenever it appears in anything I’m reading, so I find myself thinking vaguely fond thoughts of recognition whenever I come across it.’

‘I don’t have a favourite word. There are too many. But I did laugh a lot when I came to the entry for grandissimus. I am rather fond of some Scottish place names (Pickletillum, Pittenweem, Nether Rumgally) but of course these don’t count.’

‘Yes, people ask this all the time! And I still haven’t come up with a decent answer. What I sometimes say is I quite like the word helicopter: not for what it means, but because I suspect most people would tend to assume the parts it is made of are heli + copter (hence things like helipad, heli-lift, and gyrocopter, ROFLcopter (!)), when of course it is helico + pter, spiral wing.’

‘As a non-native English speaker, I like the word scratch. Just because of how it sounds, really.’

‘I’m in the “don’t have one” camp. I do, however, have an “official” one for use in response to this very question: echt (italics essential). I like to make people happy.’

‘I couldn’t pick a single “favourite” as there are too many that I like an awful lot—all for different reasons. It all depends on my mood. However, one that I’m currently extremely keen on is the transitive verb exeleutherostomize: it has a fantastic rhythm when spoken, that fact of its being extremely close to the original Greek appeals greatly to me (as a Classicist), and I think its meaning (“to say (something) freely”) is one that has carried significant political weight across a number of centuries. I also really like the fact that I don’t think it is has any particularly close synonyms—its meaning is quite unique!’

‘Short answer: lineage. Long answer: My favourite word is in fact Dutch—schanskorven. It’s a horribly ugly phenomenon, cages with stones piled up to create “decorative” walls, but the word is just beautiful. I also love beschoeiing and bewegwijzering. For English, a close runner-up is longevity, because its pronunciation is utterly unexpected (at least for a foreigner like me), and because it’s a concept for which we don’t have a word in Dutch, and it’s always nice to find new words that elegantly express something you thought you needed more than one word for. However, its pronunciation is slightly uncomfortable.’

‘Having been asked this question quite a lot, I decided many years ago that I needed a standard response, so I selected ombrifuge as my favourite word of choice. It sounds nice and it has a useful but neglected application.’

‘I have two favourite words, Peter. I cannot explain my affection for the first, which is stripy. I’m equally fond of striped. I would never admit this preference to a journalist, however … The second is tabby. The word itself pleases me, for some aesthetic reason(s) or other, while I still remember how fascinated I was to discover its original meaning (this was many moons ago and long before any thoughts of lexicography had entered my head). It’s been a favourite ever since, really, while other words have come and gone over the years. Obviously, I’m now very fond of the thing it denotes as well. Of course, I do realize that the choice of these two particular words probably marks me out as a crazy cat lady.’

‘Having been asked this question repeatedly, I’ve had time to come up with an answer. I have decided that my favourite word is vulpine. This is partially because I picture the V to represent the face of a fox.’

‘I can’t say I really have a single, definitive favourite – but one that’s always stuck with me (since I was a child and had no idea what it meant!) is kerfuffle. When I was small I imagined that it was some kind of furry, loveable creature, a bit like a powder puff but with legs and a face. (Apologies for the unwarranted insight into my childhood mind…) I now know it to be something far less appealing but, nonetheless, I still smile when I hear the word.’

‘I really like the word petrichor (“A pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions”), because (1) I like the thing it signifies very much (2) there aren’t many nouns referring to specific smells I don’t think (3) the word itself sounds very fantasy-fiction-y (4) I think it’s a good name for a cat.’

To finish with, here are some of the words which were nominated without any explanation—including a few nominations I was given when I asked my colleagues the same question over a decade ago:

buttle, checkmate, chocolate, delphinestrian, gazebo, gnocchi, jetsam, lucubrate, mondegreen, mumpsimus, persiflage, serendipity, sister

Now it’s your turn!