Jan from RevGalBlogPals writes:
Since January our Sunday Spiritual Formation hour (or Sunday School) has been devoted each week to the presenter’s description of a word that describes passion/love or something. No one knows who will be presenting or what the topic will be ahead of time! Each session has been invigorating in a different way. Last week’s speaker talked about “words” and finished our time by asking each one of us what “word” we wanted to share–a favorite one.
So my suggestion for today’s Friday Five is to write about 5 words you really like. Please explain why you have chosen each word, in such ways as:
It is a…
- description or attribute of yourself
- activity you enjoy
- word that is spelled or pronounced in an interesting way
- passion of yours
- word that brings you hope, peace, or comfort
- word you like to repeat or sing
This is a fun one. Growing up, we always had a dictionary in the corner of the dining room. A BIG dictionary – some version of Webster’s unabridged. It’s a tradition we continue in our family today.
My parents were fairly insistent on teaching us to speak, write and read with confidence and literacy. The axe would fall; if you mispronounced a word, or used it incorrectly, you were sent to look it up and give a report to the family. Consequently, I always did fairly well on vocabulary and spelling in school! (The same can’t be said for my typos… ah well.)
1. Thesaurus:So many words. So little time. When the kids were little we would talk in “code” by using polysyllabic synonyms. (For instance, “ice cream” was “sub-zero dairy confection”!) After a while, they could crack the code. And wouldn’t you know it, they have good vocabularies now, too!
Now it’s your turn. Play along if you’d like. I promise not to send you to the dictionary. 🙂
An Unfinished Symphony 
I love the idea of Hallelulia in sign meaning, “Party to God” how fun is that?
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The image of the big dictionary in your dining room reminds me of my 19th birthday present–“The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary,” which came as a total surprise to me. I remember using a battered thesaurus all through high school and college for all the papers that had to be written. It is not quite the same to have online versions of those tools nowadays, but is quicker.
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I love it…praise and party to God…must remember that…thanks.
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I’m with purple, have to note that one!
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Great play! Praise and party to God reminds me of my loose translation of the Spanish Book of Common Prayer’s eucharistic translation of “Therefore let us keep the feast:” “celebratamos!” Or in Anne-speak, Let’s party!
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Nice! LOVE the Hallelujah in sign language! I will never forget one of my students asking in a fit of frustration– Why do you always use such…such…INTERESTING words??” I’d often send them to go talk to Uncle Webster or his cousin from France, M. Roget…
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Misled. Awesome!
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I really had to think about ‘misled’ over and over–it is a weird one. And I love speaking in terms the kids haven’t heard–Ella would pick up right away on that. We could only spell a short time and get away with it.
I need a source to look up the Hallelujah signing. I did check out a ‘church signs’ book but the only thing I remember right off is ‘Jesus’ being the center of each palm.
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I loved reading these. You show how much you love to play with words and I think it’s very fun that you generously passed that along to the next generation.
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Simple words. Should a journalist try to build a large vocabulary? One of the things good writing instructors do is to use simple familiar words — words that mass audiences will understand. Does that mean all those hours spent in high school learning words like egregious1 were a waste of time?As a budding professional writer should you stop trying to learn new words? Is something like a daily e-mail service about words useless? The answer of course is no.
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