My favourite word, and what it started.

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the purple button to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

What’s your favourite word in the English language? Any other language?

Before I begin, I can’t tell you how good it is to be able to type on a keyboard again, using a screen big enough to see without glasses.

Even if my old laptop is a bit slow, at least it gets the job done, while I decide what to do about a new computer.

Now, on with this week’s subject. Here’s my favourite word.

Comestible.

You might think that an old-fashioned word for food is a strange one to be my all-time favourite, let me elucidate.

I first recall hearing the word way back in the 1970s, on a ship, uttered by a third engineer who was a renowned gourmand. The way he pronounced it gave it such gravitas, it conjured up visions of groaning tables and conspicuous excess.

It actually sparked my interest in arcane language, the sort of words that refined people in Victorian times might use.

Little did I know it then, but I was to put that interest to use when writing Steampunk, building an alternative universe based on the mid-nineteenth century.

To make that world seem exotic and different, I scoured the darkest corners of the internet for words that had fallen out of fashion. I wanted words that would be familiar to Victorians and ways of speaking that hinted at a different way of life.

Words like Pantechnicon, Napery, Lodestone or Nefarious.

They roll off the tongue and imbue any sentence with an air of mystery. And when I couldn’t find a suitable one, I invented it, using Latin and Greek roots and a little embellishment of my own. You can get the meaning but the construction is subtly different.

Words like Prosthesium, Cofé, Magicker and Sophir.

Before I knew it, I was using them in conversation, or imagining characters on T.V. exchanging their modern parlance for the gracious syllables of yesteryear.

My apologies, I seem to be doing it now. But I think you get the message.

All that happened because of one word.

Words are powerful.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know below.

Then, please click the purple button to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.

Until next time.

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