Words

I haven't always been interested in words.

That's because, if I'm honest, they used to frighten me.

I mean, why put an 'H' in spaghetti? Why does the word 'those' not have a 'Z' in it instead of an 'S'?

Things changed however when I found out ... after years of living in fear ... that 'dichotomy' had absolutely nothing to do with removal of a man's most essential extremity.

No more quivering in fear every time that word was used for me!

Not that it was used much by anyone in the northeast of England when I was young. More often than not people would say 'Wey man, it's split doon the middle, hinney' and be completely unaware that they had just used one definition of the word 'dichotomy'.

We were simple people you see. We thought education and schooling was useful only to give parents time to make more children and go to work. A kind of baby-sitting service if you like.

I however used school ... especially English lessons ... to rid myself of my northeast accent. I began to pronounce my words as the rules of Queens English demanded they should be pronounced.

This resulted in ridicule from family and friends.

Simple saying 'no' correctly in the northeast ... 'nay', 'ner' or 'no-a' (pronounced 'noah') was more usual ... would raise eyebrows and cause some folks to 'out' themselves as abderianists.

I braved the scathing wit and merciless ridicule for many a year and, even if I say so myself, I became highly skilled in the art of adoxography, as you have no doubt already noticed.
  
My attempts to better myself resulted in exsibilations from my peers, to which I responded with aggressive attacks of hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian nature.

This may make me seem to be somewhat of a philosophunculist, but at least I know what 'philosophunculist' means without having to look it up.

Words, eh?

Don't ya just love 'em?

Words From A Smug B******!

I like words.

I look 'em up ... the complicated, long ones anyway ... and  I occasionally throw 'em at people just to see how they deal with it.

It's a bit of fun and it passes the time.

But it has been said, or at least hinted at, that the average English speaking person has a vocabulary size ranging between 10000 and 20000 words.

On the basis that this assumption is true, and having met very many people over the years that display vocabularic (I made this word up) skills of a chair leg, I feel forced, and indeed obliged, to elevate myself into the 'well above average' group of English speakers.

{ Author exhales onto finger nails of right hand then polishes said nails on shirt. Grins smugly at reader }

IT

I like words.

Big ones.  One's that people seldom hear or see.

The bigger and more difficult to say the word is, the better I like it.

But there is one word that I hate.

I despise it with every fibre of my body.

The word is "it".

I haven't always hated this word. In fact I only began to hate it a few days ago when I saw it written in the middle of a sentence of a note that I was reading.

For nearly a minute I blanked.  I could not for the life of me work out what "it" was supposed to mean.

To me, it just looked like a ridiculous combinations of letters.

I really do not like "it"!