Some people say that it is bad to have favourites. Yet we all have them. Whether it be a favourite godson, or a favourite coffee shop. Both of those are fairly benign examples. I only have one godson (Hello George), and I am not sure that it matters to anyone what your favourite coffee shop is.

At other times though having favourites is hard. As an example I have heard parents talk about having a favourite child. Not so good for the other children, especially if they realise it.

Still for me I don’t think favourites are all bad. So today I thought I would look at some of my favourite words. Sounds a bit like I am off to do a sound of Music remake…

So without further ado these are a few of my favourite things words.

Oddly my favourite word of all is a german word. Why I would choose Wunderbar as my favourite I have no idea. It could be because it sounds better than wonderful, which is what it means. Or it may be because it sounds like a wonderbra. And who could not think a wonderbra deserving of favouritism? Maybe it is because it implies a bar full of wonder. I suspect though that a bar full of whiskey would keep me happier. Still wunderbar takes the lead in my list of favourites.

wonderbralogoSometimes I change it to wunderbravo. No idea why I do that either. Still Bravo is another great word, deserving of a place in my favourites list. This despite the fact that I rarely if ever use it. I think though we should all use it more.

The word bravo comes from the Italian and means bold. According to the google tool for establishing the popularity of words, it is at it’s most popular now. I can’t help but think this is because of the tv network, rather than the word itself.

Before that it was most popular in the late 1880’s to early 1890’s. Sometimes it staggers me the amount of useless information you can find out on the internet! Anyway I like the word Bravo, somehow for me it conjures up a romanticised image of England.  of

So what other words do I like?

Well there is a certain swear word that I know I use far too often. If you have heard me use it and I caused you offence I apologise. Still it is a wonderfully descriptive word and can be used for all sorts of different purposes. Whether something is terrible or incredible the same word can be used to describe it. And yet whilst it often passes my lips I refuse to write it down on my blog. How odd is that!

There are other words I find myself using a lot. Even though I wish I didn’t.  The one that immediately springs to mind is awesome. My problem with it is that it is overused. For me if something is awesome I expect it to be awe-inspiring. Sadly when I and 99% of other people use it what they mean is that it is cool. Whether you use awesome for it’s original meaning or just to say something is cool, it deserves to be a favourite.

Cool would once have been a word that was a favourite, despite being the epitome of uncool. Still somewhat aging myself I prefer the word wicked, although I seem to use awesome more. It is another word whose meaning has been completely misappropriated.

​For today my last favourite word will have to be whiskey. There are two reasons for this.

  1. Whiskey is one of my favourite drinks. Translated I believe it means water of life and that is something we should all enjoy.
  2. Here in Peru when you take someone’s photograph rather than say cheese  you ask them to say Whiskey. And any word that makes people smile must be a good one.

So there you have it – a few of my favourite words. What are yours? Let me know in the comments.

Oh and here is a chart showing the popularity of these words from 1800 to 2008 in books. Sadly it doesn’t seem to cover the last 7 years where I suspect there might be some changes: