Oh, what a wonderful word... the start of something fun?
I have always had a fascination with words. One of my favourite words is 'Palaverous', which basically means: to be wordy, verbose, given to palaver. It was once used by a friend to describe me... because I ramble on like a buffoon (oops!). I jumped on it because I'd never heard the word before. Yes, I was slightly embarrassed once he'd defined it for me, but it stuck in my head and now I drop it into casual conversation as if it's just a word that everyone knows.
I also love finding new words that are just plain nice to roll off your tongue. A few years ago I shared an example on our facebook page: Verisimilitude! You can't say that word and not sound super posh. It refers to the appearance of being true or real.
And then there are the words that other languages have for things that we just don't have an equivalent of in English. Some of these words have such beautiful meanings. Like 'Shinrin-yoku', a word used in Japan to define the healing effect of walking through a forest, it literally means 'forest bathing'. I can absolutely relate to the idea of bathing in the forest and the ensuant feeling of healing (ooh, a rhyme, I love rhymes).
I have incorporated this word-love of mine into our products with a whole range of goodies featuring interesting collective nouns, fun dictionary definitions, and don't even get me started on my obsession with grammar rules.
Something fun for word lovers?
So anyway, on the subject of this potentially being the start of something new and fun; earlier today I shared the image below, showing a definition of the word 'Nyctophilia'.
This word is one that I happened upon during one of many many hours lost in the time-sucking world of Pinterest. I find a lot of words on Pinterest, usually overlaid onto a stock photo with a definition. But when I go and do a quick google of these words, I often find that someone just made them up for the sake of creating a post. I know every word was made up by someone at some point, but I always feel deflated when I find out it isn't actually a word in any dictionary.
This got me thinking about my word-love and how there are probably other crazy people out there that love words as much as I do. So, I sketched this galactical image, added the definition, and shared it to our Instagram and Facebook followers. I would like to make this a regular thing so that we are sharing one word a week. But the really fun bit... I want our followers to get involved and share the word-love. I decided we should have a hashtag for this so that it can have a place in the internet world. I thought the hashtag could be used in three possible ways...
- If you like a word we've posted then you could share it that week and use the hashtag with your post so that fellow word-loving followers can find you. You could use our image* in your post if you wanted to, or you could create your own photo for that word of the week and share the word definition in your image caption.
- If you know of a great word you would love for us to share then you could share a post about that word with its definition and then use the hashtag so we can find it. We can then pick our faves to illustrate and share. This would be a great way for us to hear from those of you that speak other languages with those magical words that we don't have an equivalent of in English (I think Welsh, Japanese and Finnish each have some great examples).
- Maybe we could have a monthly word challenge with a public vote and then the person that suggested the winning word gets a prize from NATA.
Can you tell I have a lot of thoughts swilling around in my brain for this? Is it a good idea? Do you even like learning new words or am I the only one? What could the hashtag be? I'm kind of liking #ohwhatawonderfulword but it's a bit on the palaverous side!
I have so many questions but I think it could be really fun. Please comment below if you have any thoughts.
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*If you chose to share one of our images we would simply ask that you credit us in the caption to say where the image came from.
4 Responses
Deb Urb
It’s a great idea! I love words too and trying to work out what they mean when I come across a new one. I love the word paraphernalia, it reminds of my old PE teacher who used it describe the excessive amount of jewellery we wore to school in the 80s :D
Nicky
Yes! I love, love, love words (see, I should have used three different words there, but too excited!). This is such a great idea. I will get my thinking cap on. We used to have a book for the boys called Thesaurus Rex – which was a wonderful way of introducing them to more varied and fascinating language. I still love it when one of them says a word, but pronounces it wrong, because then I know they’ve learnt it from reading.
Amanda
I love learning new words too! I can’t wait to hear more about this 🙌🏼
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Kez
April 21, 2018
Love the idea of people posting images of the words they’d like to suggest and using the hash tag. Would be nice to have it be any kind of post, a photo, a drawing, a collage, a video, painting basically anything for nata to pick a favorite from.
Maybe a discount code for the chosen word?