"These are a few of my favorite things..."

And by "things," I mean "words." Or maybe my favorite things are words. Well, at least a few of my favorite things are.

Hey, you were warned, I told you Quettandil means Word Lover. And not only that, but it's Quenya for Word Lover. Which means I don't just love words, I love them so much I need a fictional language to express my love. Yeah.

And Melanie had already taken Book Lover in Quenya, Parmandil.

It's funny to me now that I once thought I loved words in foreign languages, and of course I loved books, but English words weren't anything special. Ha. That was never true. Well... maybe when I was three? I doubt it. I'm still much more interested in foreign languages than in using my linguistics training for various applications in English, but... that's not the same thing.

Anyway, on to the point.

Last month Shannon Hale did a lovely "These are a few of my favorite words" post. She asked us to give her words we love in the comments, "Words you like the look of, words you like to taste on your tongue, words whose meanings are unique and fun, whatever you like."

I commented several times.

I sort of tried not to. But then I'd comment, and then I'd think of more... I probably just should've collected them all on paper, first, but I was Excited. Asked for my favorite words! What an opportunity! My brain wouldn't turn off. After the commenting I drove down the highway with my voice recorder at hand, to catch the words flitting by.

Ooh, "flitting."

I digress.

Yay, "digress!"

It occurred to me that I really should do my own post about favorite words. Because, I mean, I named my blog Quettandil. And... yeah. It'd not only be appropriate, but also FUN and EASY.

I knew my favorite favorite favoritest words, the awesomest words ever. But reading other people's comments and thinking about it, I remembered there are other fun words too, words I do like the sound or feel of, words I like to play with even if I don't devote entire blog posts to just them and them alone. Er, half blog posts.

I shall start with them and work up to the most awesomest awesome EVAR. (Ironic that in a blog post about favorite words I keep repeating other words over and over, even if they really aren't my favorites... um.)

Actually, I shall start with some fun words that other commenters on Shannon Hale's post got to before I made it to the party (okay, so I wouldn't have thought of all of them without their help, but they are Good Words and I Approve):

Scrumdiddlyumptious (I don't see it in the dictionary, but it ought to be.)

Miffed

Wombat

Serendipity

Pernicious

Specificity

Discombobulate

Conundrum

Snarky

Persnickety

Kerfuffle

Superfluous

Whimsy

Squelch

Laconic ("Once, in flight school, I was even laconic.")

Tintinnabulation

Gesticulate

Genuflect

Mellifluous

Viscous

Indubitably

Fortuitous

Plethora

Ubiquitous

And some great ones people posted after me, so I obviously didn't think of them, but they ought to be included with my favorite words, really I just forgot:

Irk

Abscond

Despicable

Fickle

Words from my voice recorder, after I gave up on commenting: A few of these are ones other people said before me -- the difference is, I love these words so much, I wouldn't mind being repetitious, I'd post them anyway. Either that, or, well, I was driving, and I couldn't remember for sure what had already been said.

Credulous

Swashbuckle

Deleterious

Detritus

Plenary

Irascible

Prodigious

Quibble

Curmudgeon

Crotchety (Especially in that one episode of Babylon 5... "This cannot be a real word.")

Scallywag

Equivocate

Quiescent

Perfidy and perfidious

Sensical (Dictionaries will be adding it any day now, just you wait.)

Twiddle

Prognosticate

Pontificate

Prevaricate

Salubrious

Circumnavigate

Bric-a-brac

Gallivant

Mosey ("Plus he gets bonus points for using the word 'mosey.'")
Toodle-oo

Poppycock

Criminy

Supercilious

Suboptimal

Superoptimal

Morpheme

Onomatopoeia

And finally, the words I actually posted in my original comments. In roughly reverse order.

Obtuse

Obfuscate

Eschew

Eschew obfuscation.

Solstice (Especially because of Marian Call's song "Perilous Road" and the phrase therein, "the sad solstice sun.")

Misanthropy

Vociferous

Fricative

Deciduous

Eccentricity

Epitome

Ululation

Cacophony ("That's pretty, what's it mean?")

Bibliophile

Soporific (Thank you, Beatrix Potter... and my mother.)

Somnambulating (Marian Call again, awesome use in "Coffee by Numbers.")

Hyperallergenic (Yeah, I made that up. I have a hyperallergenic pie I make sometimes. It's delicious.)

Couth (Normally "uncouth," but dictionary.com does recognize "couth," and even includes a sample phrase of "to be lacking in couth." There you have it.)

Disambiguate

Incorrigible

Disreputable

Abominable

And now we're getting to my few favoritest favorite. Before we do that, so as not to be anti-climactic later... LET'S SWITCH LANGUAGES! No really. It'll be fun. Pleeeeaaase? Hey, I'm the one writing this blog post, and I decide. We're doing it.

In Spanish:

Calabazas (Squashes, as in pumpkins and such.)

Anteojitos (Spec-tacles! Come to think of it, I also like the word "spectacle." Whether that's in spite of Peter's mockery of my glasses, or thanks to. "Anteojitos" is the diminutive of "anteojos," or "before-eyes," or "glasses.")

Rascacielos (Scrapes-heavens. Er, um, sky-scraper.)

Rompecabezas (Breaks-heads. A puzzle.)

Osos mohosos (Moldy bears. Who wouldn't love moldy bears, let alone rhyming moldy bears?!)

Hablaba (Was talking. Blah, blah, blah, blah...)

In Japanese:

[I might be spelling a few of these wrong, as I learned them via audio lessons, but I'm pretty familiar with the standard romaji (Roman alphabet) spellings and rules, so I think if there are things I have wrong, it's mostly in where to put the word divisions -- sometimes there isn't a big difference between a suffix and a particle.]

Chotto

Kawaii (Because. No, I'm not saying that's what it means... never mind.)
Kara (Uh, 'cause of the above... this one actually does mean "because." And it goes at the end of the sentence, and it has a nice sound, all open and fully pronounced as AW vowels, but still choppy and short at the end, and with that nice little flip of the tongue on the "r.")
-chan (Does that count? Of course it does. I say so.)
Chiisai
Hajimemashite (I love Japanese words. They have such wonderful sounds, they just roll off the tongue. After a bit of practice. They're a little tricky if you're not familiar with Japanese pronunciations, but I'd be happy to say them for you, anytime. Just ask. Or don't, I still might. As Melanie said, "I feel like you're a CD.")
Arigatou gozaimashita (A past tense of thank you, for thanking someone about something completed, like having you over for dinner last night, a thing that is very important to remember to do the next day. Thank them, I mean. The next day.)
Shichi ji ni (A phrase, not a word, but the combination of sounds is so great! The first "i" is barely pronounced. It means, "at seven o' clock.")

Otokonoko
Nomimono
Watashi tachi wa
Shimashita
Ikimashoo

And a couple others from a phonetics class that I can't spell without the International Phonetic Alphabet. I don't remember what languages they're from. But trust me when I say they are AWESOME. One... would be something like, "amagomamumu," but the first and last two "m"s are "voiceless," kind of like a whisper (in practice, like you're sniffing out your nose in the middle of the word...), and those two "u"s are nasal. And the other one... if you pretend my upside down question marks are glottal stops (the sound in "uh-oh" between "uh" and "oh"), it'd be wa¿aha¿ayo¿o. IIRC. And one of those two, no joke, means "don't laugh." Seriously. I think the other is "two barrels of sour cream," unless that was what that other word meant, the one I can't remember because I couldn't pronounce it, with all the ejectives and consonant clusters.

And now.

MY FAVORITE WORDS:

Oligoglot (Dictionary.com doesn't have it. This is why dictionary.com is so, so depressed. Not only does a book by the name of Le Ton beau de Marot have it, it also has a chapter entitled "How Jolly the Lot of an Oligoglot." Causing me to fall in love. With the word and the book.)

Transmogrify (Calvin and Hobbes, of course. Via Ron.)

Spelunker (Via Ron.)

Antepenultimate (Remains my most popular post by far, whether I link to it or not. Though really, it contains a sad missed opportunity -- instead of saying, "the antepenultimate syllable," I should've said "the antepenult." Since that's a word, too.)

Defenestrate

Apokolokyntosis

I'd worry that I built this up too much and made it anti-climactic, but really. Apokolokyntosis! (Uh, yeah, that link is different than the last one. And now that I click on the link from the link, I remember that really it should go on "defenestrate," not "apokolokyntosis," but there is a connection, so... Uh, it makes sense. Really.)

Now, because there are so many delicious, savory, delightful words out there, I'm sure I've missed some important ones, even after this lengthy list.

What are some of your favorite words?