I Love Words
By M.-L.
@MALUSE (69416)
Germany
September 8, 2019 2:50pm CST
I love words, I really do. I'm a logomaniac. Yes, there is a word for this! I even collect words, a very enjoyable hobby, believe me. Words cost nothing, don’t need much space, don’t breed and multiply like, say, Sticky Insects. I have a large collection of side-splittingly, sock-wettingly funny German surnames. If only you knew German well, I could entertain you for the rest of the day.
Compound nouns are typical for the German language. English has some words like this, for example bus + driver = bus driver. German has innumerable ones. Innumerable because we can make up new words if we feel like it. Just some examples, I can’t resist: would you like to have as your surname Chicken-leg, Mice-nest (I’m going to write the words with a hyphen so that you can understand them, but they’re really written together as one word), Pig’s-bladder, Faithful-sausage, Morning-sweat, Full-moon, Hollow-belly, Kneel-down, From-behind, Milk-sack, Angst-worm, Courageous-apple, Head-nail, Flour-trousers, Nine-devils, Don’t-laugh, Spoon-wood, Taste-beer, Grumble-belly, Winter-coat etc. etc. These names are fortunately very rare. I’ve been on the look-out for years and have by now collected some hundred.
I put a surname into my collection if it has a funny meaning or if it sounds funny. For that I can’t give you examples because you have to have a German ear to react to that.
English words can sound funny, too, at least I think so and my students are of the same opinion. Words like blabbermouth, and wobbleass or the expression ‘wallow in blood’ don’t need much explanation. We hear them with our Teutonic ears and understand them immediately. ‘Pupils have pimples’ produces a sure laugh and wins them over to English at once.
The older ones find words like ‘megalomaniac’ and other so-called hard words interesting, i.e. words of Greek and Latin origin and squeeze them in wherever possible. They have then to develop a feeling for style and speech levels.
Have you got any favourite words in your native language?
15 people like this
11 responses
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
8 Sep 19
Some of those are hilarious. I wonder whether they sound so funny, though, to the people who bear those names. Most of the really funny English surnames have quietly gone out of use but Charles Dickens was certainly aware of them and made up some of his own (or did he? I do wonder whether many of the names he used were real names: Pickwick certainly is (it's a Saxon name, apparently, and, though I don't know its original meaning, I don't believe that it describes a person who was known for fiddling with the wicks of candles!). 'Chuzzlewit is also a real name, I learn.
I found a rather long and learned document on "The Naming of Characters in the Works of Charles Dickens", which you may or may not find interesting. I've put the link at the bottom.
We do have a real name in Cambridgeshire which could rub shoulders with some of the funniest of your German names and that is Gotobed! You can see it on one or two shop fronts in Ely still and I believe that the owners are proud of having such a name! It's origin is rather more prosaic: it is actually a corruption of the personal name 'Godbert' or 'Godebert' and would have meant 'son of Godebert'. That, in its turn, is a Saxon or Old Germanic compound word meaning 'bright god'.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=englishunsllc
1 person likes this
@LeaPea2417 (36399)
• Toccoa, Georgia
22 Sep 19
I love words too. I liked reading the dictionary when I was a child. I learned a new word recently. It is "kerfuffle". It means "a commotion or noise", "a chaotic scene caused by an altercation".
@garymarsh6 (23393)
• United Kingdom
12 Sep 19
Yes I have a few favourite words which you might find amusing too!
1. Floccinaucinihilipilification.
2. Antidisestablishmentarianism.
3. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
And finally although it is not an English it is Welsh word
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
@LindaOHio (155562)
• United States
8 Sep 19
I think Angie said enough for all of us! Just offhand I can't think of any words except for a city name that I like to say, Keokuk (in Iowa). Thought of one -- cattywampus. I use that a lot.
@LindaOHio (155562)
• United States
8 Sep 19
@MALUSE Misaligned or askew. "She didn't know how to sew; so the hem on her dress was all cattywampus."
@MALUSE (69416)
• Germany
8 Sep 19
@LindaOHio Is that a widely known expression in the USA?
1 person likes this
@kaka135 (14916)
• Malaysia
10 Sep 19
I didn't know there is this word "logomaniac". Good to know that and I am glad to learn from you.
My native language is Chinese. I like Chinese characters as they usually have their meaning, as many of them derived from picture writing. We can also combine part or whole of the character and make it another character. For example, the character I attached consists of two characters: car + dry, but the character means pavilion. I don't know why I like this character, probably it's because of the written word and pronunciation.
@DocAndersen (54413)
• United States
9 Sep 19
@MALUSE well only when the conversation is bifurcated, or the response to a problem takes a bifurcated approach.
Other than that, all the time!
I went to an English school for 5th and 6thj grade. When I got back to the US, I remember asking my English teacher why she didn't assign 30 words a day to be defined!
