Inside The Blogger's Studio: Part One

What is your favorite word?

Intercalary (adj.)

1.

1. Inserted in the calendar to make the calendar year correspond to the solar year. Used of a day or month.
2. Having such a day or month inserted. Used of a year.

2. Inserted between other elements or parts; interpolated.

I fell in love with it during Organismic Biology -- grasses have intercalary meristems.

What is your least favorite word?

I think a lot of people interpret this question incorrectly -- men in particular. Men tend to respond with words they hate to hear women say. "Random." "Shady." "Whatever."

There are definitely words that I can't stand to hear certain people say; there's a coworker that uses the word "sammich" instead of "sandwich", and boy do I hate that. But "sammich" isn't really a word, so I don't think that counts, either.

And I hate the way that some words are used. If I'm reading the sports page, for example, and a story notes that "the Cleveland defense was raped for over 600 yards", I cringe.

But I think what the question is REALLY getting at isn't a word's meaning or how it's used or who's saying it. Just the word itself.

In that case, I choose "pleat", a word with no appeal whatsoever.