I Love...Words

Well, duh.  It's not like the subtitle of my blog doesn't give a major hint, right?

But it's confession time.  Here's how much I like words.

When I first learned German, I used to sit alone in my room reading words out loud.  The thing I liked was the physical sensation of the word in my mouth.  I liked the feeling on my tongue.  The ch that can sound soft or chunky depending on how you produce it.  The harsh, back-of-the-throat rolled-R.  I practiced my long-forgotten Italian that way too, rolling the R at the front of my tongue like there was no tomorrow.

But it's not just foreign words.  One of my favorite websites is Merriam-Webster.com.  You not only can look up the meaning of a word, but synonyms and antonyms too.  

Etymology hooks me every time.  It's fascinating how words change over the centuries. 

The last word for which I looked up the origin was "vice".  I wanted to know why vice (bad habit) is used in Vice-President.  It turns out the word with the meaning "defect or shortcoming" stems from the Latin word vitium, meaning fault.  The vice in Vice-President comes from the Latin vice or vicis, meaning change, alternation or stead.  So, although it might seem that politics and shortcomings belong together, the identical spelling is purely coincidental.

Webster.com also has video clips.  What?  You didn't know that?  I've watched them all.

• How words get added to a dictionary
• Why they get removed
• What ironic really means (pay attention Alanis M)
• Mispronunciations that are fine (shudder:  nuclear)
• Even a clip about a "ghost word", which was printed in the dictionary for around  fourteen years although it didn't really exist.

But wait.  There's more.  The award for the ultimate Word Nerd goes to me.  See this picture of me on vacation?

And this one?

I not only visited the Noah Webster's house, I made my husband take pictures of me.

Don't I look proud? 

 

I love, adore, treasure, savor, value, appreciate, cherish, and delight in words!