Words About Words: The Fair, the Foul and the Made-Up

Rose is one of my favorite words

I thought maybe the place to start this week's assigned topic on favorite and disliked words would be with some famous WordMasters:

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
William Shakespeare 

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
Mark Twain 

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.
Winston Churchill 

When we got this topic, I pondered which way to respond. I have words that I wildly overuse in my first drafts so I must "like" them, but of course they all either end in "-ly" or are the word "that" and a lot of them disappear long before the book makes its way to the Reader. So I don't believe I like them as much as my Muse lazily sticks them into the writing the first time through the story.

I have words I purely like the sound of: grandiloquence and munificence for example. But I next-to-never use them in either my daily speech or my writing.

I have words I like because they flow so beautifully and conjure up attached images that please me: Galadriel, Lothlorien, Rivendell. Hmm, all names, all Tolkien. Ok.

I have words I love because they substitute for words that aren't appropriate in the office and also they sneakily remind me of favorite TV shows. So much the better if whoever I'm talking to recognizes them as well!  Frell, frack, dren... Along those lines, years ago I made up a word for an as-yet unpublished SFR, uttered often by the villainness and I love it so much I use occasionally...sort of a swear word, sort of "stop what you're doing NOW" word to remind myself not to get into an anxiety loop or overthink something...people must assume it's a foreign language, which it sorta is LOL.

OH - crisp! Now that is a word I do love and I use it so much at work to describe how I things to be that once when we had Bigtime Consultants working with us, who always have their own corporate-speak jargon, they'd all adopted "crisp" by the time the assignment ended.

(The Whores said I needed five words and I'm up to about three....(whines) It's HARD to just pluck words at random from the air. I don't usually write about words. Maybe I need to get out more...uh oh, I digress.)

I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action.
Mae West 

Merrily is a good one...and optimistic. Because I'm an optimist through and through. WHEW!!!

Words I dislike is easier because there actually are a few: turgid, puce, torpid...snake, rattlesnake, water moccasin...oops, there I go again, down a different train of thought...

I'm going to let a poet get me out of here gracefully:

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
Khalil Gibran