These are a few of my favourite [words].

So I was watching Countdown (choose 8 letters at random, consonants and vowels, try to find the longest word) earlier, and it got me thinking about what my favourite words are. And so, replete with trepidation at my etymological ambition, I decided to compile my encyclopaedic opus; I then, unfortunately, realised I couldn't really think of anything, so I instead decided to chuck a load of hilariously verbose lexicon into my introductory paragraph in order to lessen the anticlimax, and increase the hilarity. For you, however, the challenge of traversing that quagmire of prose is soon to be finished; rest easy, my friends, the rest of this liturgy will, I promise, be much easier on the ol' eyes and brain.

Yes, as I said before, but you probably didn't catch, I am going to make a list of words I really like and explain my reasoning, but I can't really think of that many, so I will keep coming back to this until I've made a full compendium for my own perusal and enjoyment at a later date. Like a photo album with pictures of people wearing pretentious hats: utterly pointless, but fabulously entertaining.

Fuck

v.tr.

1. To have sexual intercourse with.
2. To take advantage of, betray, or cheat; victimize.
3. Used in the imperative as a signal of angry dismissal.

C'est fantastique; its beauty in its triteness, an almost tacit exclamation of distaste and displeasure; the air crackles with atmospheric disturbance whence this word is uttered. It just has it all: situational brilliance, grandiloquence, speed, and emotion. It's that fricative elongation at the outset which sets that fantastic tone you can prolong throughout; such as "ffffffffffffuck". There aren't that many words in the world which can be moulded, and/or are subjective enough to be contextually appropriate in almost all places: celebration, "fuck yeah", valediction, "fuck this", commiseration, "that fucking sucks", sarcasm, "har-fucking-har", anger, "fuck you", hatred, "you fuck", love, "I fucking love you/let us fuck", ad infinitum.

Even if you start tracing it back to its alleged origins, you can see its luminance already emerging: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely." That's captivating in its sublime ridicule; and that is over five-hundred years ago.

Naturally, as a 20-something student, I have attached - as Saussure would suggest - a kind of 'arbitrary significance' to fuck; turning it from the taboo voiceless labiodental fricative (just look how pretentious this is!!!) into the seminal word within my lexicon. This raises a crucial issue, for me at least: how people receive this word. Again, as Saussure would suggest, it is not an offensive word in and of itself, because its meaning is fluid and changeable; it is impossible to arbitrarily ascribe negative connotations to a word based on any of its defining characteristics. What, of the word, is inherently crass, rude, or offensive? Would it be the biting sound you can affix it with, or perhaps that it is too short to convey such meaning? Could it be because 'f' and 'u' should never be placed adjacently, or that 'c' and 'k' can only denote Calvin Klein? No, none of these (quasi-plosive, length, random) traits could be said to be inherently - or via attached significance - offensive. It is our mind which supplies that which it then finds offensive; a grand sadomasochistic irony, used in this woefully pandering tone to supplant the legitimacy of the phrase. I cannot, cannot, abide it when people accuse the word of being (so often) 'grossly inappropriate'. This hyperbole is the kind of lexical extravagance that is completely and utterly unnecessary:

Brutishly coarse.

Offensive; disgusting.

Lacking sensitivity or discernment.

Show me where these characteristics can be transplanted into the effect of fuck: I would love to see you try. Spin your subjective hyperbolism somewhere else, please, because a multi-faceted word pliable enough to signify the ameliorative and the pejorative simultaneously, as far as I am concerned, is categorically and intractably magnificent.

Damn my breeches, I just cannot help but enjoy the empathic nature of this word; how you can vest such symbolism and emotion into one four-letter word? Su-bloody-perb. All of you knee-jerk haters out there can get some perspicacity please; because it is the folly of your generation which leads to the disaffected youths acquiring fuck as their lexical iconography. Blame yourselves, your foibles have lead to this; and blame yourselves for being offended for a word propagated by your generation; utilised by your writers; used as revolutionary for gender rights; blame yourselves, you fucking morons.

God it's so enjoyable.

Tmesis

n., pl., -ses (-sēz).
Separation of the parts of a compound word by one or more intervening words [...]

Isn't it just fanfuckingtastic? Not in its traditional sense: "where I go ever", instead of "wherever I go", no, no, au contraire mon copine; in its fantastic 'split-the-word' sense. I have an inkling in my brain that this is Stephen Fry's favourite word, also, which lends credence to my announcement that it's so utterly wonderful. I have nowhere near as much to say about this word, mainly because of its somewhat erudite usage, and lack of real-life practicality. It is not an oft situation that calls for the use of tmesis the word, but it is as oft as the wind in Cuba to use the concept. I don't want to infix (if anyone gets this I has ur babies lawl) my mindless exuberance into you all, so I won't bang on too much about how bally marvellous this idea is; I shall, however, send you off with a little party-bag which I will have imbibed with my effulgence, so you can at least re-enter this wanton lexical splooging. I should probably switch to prolix and/or vernacular, and/or patois now, I suppose. Anyway, if you're wondering why the last few sentences made no sense whatsoever, it's because I got distracted by the fact that it's almost pitch-black outside and it's only 16.28 - I went into auto-pilot and just vomited words onto the screen, that's why it's come out as this pudding of a paragraph.

Anyway, that's all I have to intone on that word. Though I could quite happily waxshittinglyrical about it for some time more.

The last word I can be bothered to celebrate, today at least, is...:

Arrant

adj.

Completely such; thoroughgoing.

Suffice it to say, it's almost enough that in its definition it contains the word "thoroughgoing" (which is not only impossible to type at speed, but hilarious to look at; it looks like jelly), but it has, oh so, much more as well! Come on, it's synonymous with egregious for fuck's sake: what more could you possible want from a word which claps out of the mouth, and goes like the clappers too? Like a slattern's lady-bits, it's perversion is in its looks: that typographical set-up is fabulously reminiscent of a penis, seriously, go look at it some more. And this Freudian reading is nothing compared to the fact that it almost spells 'a rant'. Not only that, but it's the kind of arcane patois which is both in itself impressive, but fairly becoming in its usage as well; it's not the profligate grandiloquence (tee-hee) of my other favourite words (which might come later) and nor is it as indecipherable as some of them: it's niche, but understandable contextually. Just what you want a word to be to sound impressive and self-effacing.

I mean, come on, who could resist such an arrant list, such as mine? Love it.

(P.S. Apologies for words making no sense in sentences, I was trying to make it as horrendous as was possible, but I got tired and decided to just throw verbiage at the screen. If it's unintelligible, I don't really care, 'cause no one is reading anyway ;D)!