We have had a few threads on favorite words, as well as a recent thread on your special word of the moment. However, in another thread, which will remain unmentioned , CJ brought up a point that I had never considered. In a very creative post he talks about disliking some words because of their sound. Now, I don't agree with him on the sound of "epicaricacy," but there are words that I dislike because of their sound. Further, there are other words that I just plain dislike. What about you? Here are some of mine:

feckless - While a perfectly good word for the meaning, I hate the sound of it.

orientate and irregardless - I know that we've discussed these before in "pet peeves," but really they aren't pet peeves because they do appear in OED. They are words, and I dislike them both. "Orient" and "regardless" do the job much better.

I will be interested to hear yours.

>I hate the sound of [feckless].

what the feck are you talking about?!

(this by way of saying, you can't get much more subjective (in the area of language) than by opening up this topic.)

My only problem with "feckless" is that there is no corresponding antonym. How many people have you ever heard described as being "feckful"?

quote:

---

C.J. asks: How many people have you ever heard described as being "feckful"?

---

Come to think of it, I've never heard any people described as being "feckless" either.

My own personal lexicon is, therefore, both fecklessless and feckfulless, and I intend to keep it that way.

[This message was edited by jerry thomas on Mon Mar %75, 2004 at 16:14.]

I thought there would be a lot of people with unfavorite words. However, today on the chat jheem made me realize something...he said he was thinking of a word to post here but he couldn't think of any words he disliked. Aha! Of course! People are here because of their love of words. They are LOGOPHILES!

Actually I dislike most swearwords. I seldom use them and find myself annoyed by people who use them a lot. I'm not sure why this is. I have no moral objection to swearing just an aesthetic one in that the words are usually ugly and unnecessary.
A few nights ago there was a TV program on about the problems caused for police by drunks late at night and in the early hours of the morning when the clubs close. It featured quite a few scenes of foul mouthed young men and women who seemed incapable of stinging together three words unless one of them was an expletive.

Kalleh: I hate the sound of ______.
tsuwm: you can't get much more subjective (in the area of language) than by opening up this topic.

I think that may have been her gentle way of pointing out that a prior discussion, on "liking or disliking a word", was entirely subjective.

Let's see. Folks tend to dislike words because they're:

1. not correct (i.e., newly coined or newer meaning emerging),

2. sound bad (i.e., contain aesthetically unpleasing phonemes), or

3. have disagreeable denotata or connotata (i.e, denote or connote displasing things).

I just don't know. There are other reasons, and any is as valid as the next in their own subjective way. Problem with language though is it isn't under any one person's (or group's) control and it doesn't heed any of these filtering criteria when adopting a new word or changing an old one's meaning.

As far as swearing is concerned, I've heard it done eloquently and badly, but then I've heard terrible sermons and bad plays, too.

Found on the web: The ten worst-sounding words in English, according to a poll by the National Association of Teachers of Speech in August, 1946:

cacophony
crunch
flatulent
gripe
jazz
phlegmatic
plump
plutocrat
sap
treachery

Personally, I think "flatulent" has a funny, giggly sort of sound.

I think that may have been her gentle way of pointing out that a prior discussion, on "liking or disliking a word", was entirely subjective. No, Shu. CJ's post about the sound of "schadenfreude" compared to the sound of "epicaricacy" made me wonder if others had unfavorite words, based on their sounds. I realize, now, that I hate "feckless" because of its closeness to a four-letter word.

jheem makes a good point. I have also heard some eloquent swearing, though usually not. I also don't like new coinages. In fact, I just heard one today that I detest: gaydar, meaning the ability to recognize when someone is gay.

As for Shu's list, well, what is wrong with jazz? I love it!

Gaydar's been around for at least a decade. Jazz was a colloquial term for sexual intercourse. Similar to rock 'n' roll. If you don't like feck's phonological cousin, there's always swive, a beautiful word for a lovely thing. I think shufitz' list of words got the dirty end of the stick online.

Like Bob, I tend to dislike swearing. It is my contention that those who swear extensively often do so because they have a poor command of English. By swearing they are able to give their words an emphasis that they would otherwise be unable to provide.

Of course, because swearing is so often overdone, much of the shock and its consequent emphasis is lost.

Regarding judging words by their sounds, on the other side of that coin is a study that was conducted years ago in which a long list of words was spoken to a group of very young children, none of whom had any idea of just what the words actually meant. The kids were then asked to rate the words as to whether or not they were pleasing to the ear.

I read about this literally decades ago and so most of the results are long gone but one word that I do recall being rated very high was "diarrhea" with one child commenting that he thought it sounded like a very nice name for a girl.

I do recall being rated very high was "diarrhea" with one child commenting that he thought it sounded like a very nice name for a girl.

Ah, when I was a nursing student, a woman needed an injection to inhibit the lactation of her breasts as she was planning to bottle feed. She asked the name of the drug, and the nurse said, "Deladumone." The patient said, "What a wonderful word. I am going to name my baby that." Sure enough, she did!

You won't see me naming any baby "Epicaricacy."

P.S. Richard, you look quite spiffy!

an antonym for feckless?! why, feckful, of course! YCLIU

I did look it up and Dictionary.com says "Honk!"

They do, however, suggest that maybe the word I'm searching for is "fecal," "forkful," or "fecula" which, upon further investigation, turns out to be a noun meaning "insect poop." (It's just this kind of thing that makes me love this site so much!)


And, to add to a one-item list started elsewhere, another great name for a band might be "The Fecal Forkful" or, in the case of a quartet, "The Fecal Forkful Four." (Punk rockers, probably...)

Quote "...P.S. Richard, you look quite spiffy!..."

Just so long as I don't look squiffy!

I did look it up and Dictionary.com says "Honk!"

I found it in Onelook, from guess whose site?
site?

>guess whose site?

yes, that was a bit of a nefarious ploy, wasn't it?! but actually, according to the OED entry, feckful hadn't been used for a couple of hundred years (and then the 'net came along).

In a meeting today, I kept hearing "this is fine, provided we tweak it a bit." I don't mind the word "tweak" when referring to "tweaking your nose." However, why is it now used to mean "refining" a document?

I usually hear and use tweak only in its fine adjustment meaning. I think it comes from electronics where to tweak something means making some small adjustment. You can also tweak code. I guess it comes from its twisting motion of adjusting something with a screwdriver.