100 most beautiful words

[woodcutter]

These words are said to be especially nice.

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles ... words.html

I'm not sure I rate "hymeneal" as all that pretty.

These are rated funniest.

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles ... words.html

The author of this, by the way, is the same as I quoted the other day moaning about a usage that Lorikeet had employed (but not because he had read Lorikeet's post!). So, with the above, you might expect an evil "prescriptivist" to be at work. But in fact the man has a linguistics PhD, vast experience, and can be found ranting elsewhere about how split infinitives are no problem at all. In fact, he declares there are "no infinitives" in English - a tiresome but logical extension of the "no future" argument. So no saying "infinitive" in class either, do you hear?

While I'm at this list of big words game, I found this one recently and I think there's no better way to show off and be heartily disliked than frequently using these!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_La ... ses_(full)

[matbury]

Personally, I think beauty's in the eye of the beholder and funny's a point of view.

[J.M.A.]

Some of those words are really beautiful!

[woodcutter]

They are always going on about this at LL, this one recently.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1441

Personally I can't get all that excited about any words really. They are only words. If you just want to make nice sounds it is better to leave them behind and scat or create nonsense.

[Karenne]

Cool lists Woody, useful!

Karenne

[woodcutter]

Seems like you now have to buy the book, in order to see the "funniest" words on the link I gave above.

Not funny at all.

[lolwhites]

They forget the word curry!

So no saying "infinitive" in class either, do you hear?

I avoid using the term "infinitive" in class as I think the students mix up the various form enough already without my encouragement.