Bertrand Russell Lists His 20 Favorite Words in 1958 (and What Are Some of Yours?)

Regard­ing the acqui­si­tion of a sec­ond lan­guage, I rec­om­mend pray­ing the rosary in that lan­guage. At many Catholic church­es, the seniors still pray the rosary before mass. At first you will find it hard going, of course, but soon you will be able to keep up with the ladies, and your tongue will get used to the nec­es­sary posi­tions. Your accent will be authen­tic. My Span­ish is still in its infan­cy, but heads turn when I speak it because I sound just like a seno­ra from Guadala­jara, yet from the looks of me, that’s impos­si­ble. It’s very fun. Besides, you will get many spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits from the exer­cise, and pick up vocab­u­lary eas­i­ly. After a while, I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in all the pro­ces­sions in the church and joined the choir. A Chris­t­ian already knows the bible sto­ries so one can put togeth­er quite a lot.

Onam­atopoeia. And chimes. And fris­son

Politi­cor­po­ra­tion

pel­lu­cid

This imme­di­ate­ly remind­ed me of the almost entire­ly unknown anec­dote about Mahat­ma Ghan­di. It appears, though one hears almost noth­ing about it, today, that the soles of Ghandi’s feet were so blis­tered by his long pil­grim­ages and insis­tence of going bare foot­ed, that cal­lous­es of one inch thick caused con­sid­er­able alarm to oth­ers when they encoun­tered him, and some­times not­ed this sur­pris­ing fea­ture, which some thought also caused him to hunch for­ward in order to walk more light­ly. It, of course, also caused him to appear even more debil­i­tat­ed. Because of his many long fasts, com­bined with pro­longed spir­i­tu­al med­i­ta­tions (he was a devout Hin­du prac­ti­tion­er, of the mys­tic tra­di­tion) to call atten­tion to the abus­es of the British occu­pa­tion with­in, and abus­es upon the Indi­an nation, he was also fright­en­ing­ly “flesh deprived” in his appear­ance, and also prone to very frag­ile health fluc­tu­a­tions, through­out his life. Some spec­u­lat­ed that this prac­tice of ser­i­al, near star­va­tion may also have con­tributed to a seri­ous­ly unpleas­ant odor to his breath, which inter­fered, con­sid­er­ably in his encoun­ters with the many state offi­cials from around the world, even after inde­pen­dence was gained for his coun­try. This con­flu­ence of per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics con­spired to prompt a British schol­ar, per­son­al­ly famil­iar with Ghan­di to coin that, now very well known term best describ­ing his per­sona as the, Super-cal­loused-frag­ile-mys­tic-hexed-by-hal­i­to­sis!
Tell that to your mid­dle school age chil­dren, or stu­dents, and they’ll remem­ber it their whole lives, as I do, after hear­ing it from my ninth grade Civics teacher, Mr Bosco, at North Mia­mi High School, in Flori­da in 1964, or ’65.

cre­pus­cu­lar, mote

fay

loafer

Zeus

nosey-park­er

dog­fox

harken

splash­es

zetet­ics

Tasty words make me hap­py in my face. I think these are deli­cious:

cadence
chiaroscuro
cas­cade
dodec­a­he­dron
ici­cle
iri­des­cent
tes­sel­la­tion
con­stel­la­tion
porce­lain
autumn
frost
spark
dusky
teacup
liquorice
glit­ter
sil­hou­ette
cel­lo­phane
wind­chimes (ok, pos­si­bly two words glued togeth­er but it’s the only way “wind” pleas­es me)

I’m hun­gry now. Hun­gry for word­sies.

I love the sound of this word too,but it’s ono­matopoeia not Onamatopoeia…cheers

Boogers
I
Cob­webs
Ana­phy­lac­tic
Pro­tag­o­nist
So
Toe/tow
Under­neath /relative
Unin­ten­tion­al
Overde­ter­mined
Der­riere
Uni­verse
Tox­o­plas­mo­sis
Cor­po­ral
Being
Lazy
See
Attaché
Sich
Oblique

Note.. as a kid the word “I” fas­ci­nat­ed me because it was at once a word and a let­ter… and Every­time I thought about it too long I would com­plete­ly for­get how to spell it … and once for­got the word alto­geth­er!

1. Delight
2. Shal­low
3. Draughty
4. Ven­omous
5. Tremen­dous
6. Flaw­less
7. Name­less
8. Clas­sic
9. Rough
10. Pru­den­tial
11. Glide
12. Omnipo­tent
13. Asyn­chro­nous
14. Durable
15. Clue­less
16. Illu­mi­nat­ic
17. Cue
18. Waxed
19. Tar­nished
20. Tanned