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24th March 2008

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Word Lists

You know what’s been annoying me recently? What’s really been getting on my nerves? Mundane lists of words. Words that are hard to spell, words that are the longest in the English language, words that are “horrible”. Yes, horrible. This list is just another list of the longest words masquerading as a list of horrible words. (Thanks to the frequently inane Neatorama for this abomination of non-neatness.)

The most obvious questions is: who cares? How are these lists making me a better person, or improving my vocabulary? I don’t care what the longest word in the whole wide world!!! is, I never use these words. I don’t care what words are the hardest to spell, I have one of those rare artifacts known as a dictionary at my disposal.

But my main gripe is that they’re all the same. All these lists feature the same words, that I’ve seen over and over again. I’ve seen the word antidisestablishmentarianism three times this week. Seriously. All three in lists of long or horrible words. Not once in a legitimate context.

And, really, it’s not hard to come up with a decent, original list. You want horrible words? How about unctuous? Just say it — unctuous — it actually sounds horrible. Harangue, too. I haven’t seen either of these words in a list, and they’re definitely horrible. They’re ugly. What about chigger, too? That’s a pretty nasty word, simply because of its almost-homonymous nature.

And words that are hard to spell? Subpoena. Antennae. Publicly. And a double-vote for harangue. These are all words that are actually used, quite often. So why are these words never on any lists?

List writers: It’s time to either get over your lists, or start coming up with something a little more original. Thanks in advance. It took me about 3 minutes to write this post. How long did you spend copying and pasting the same words from one of the other hundred-odd identical lists?