My Neighbor is Crepuscular

I love words that sound great.   They flow off the tongue and mix with the discourse in magical ways.  Most of the time the words we encounter are commonplace . . so we get used to them.  Those aren’t the ones.  But, every now and then an English word will strike me as special.

 

Finding a use for them is something else  🙂      .   But here are two English words that are in this category.

 

Crepuscular – I heard Pat use this world once, and, ever since that time, I have loved it.  It has such a cool sound.  It means ‘resembling or relating to twilight or becoming active at twilight’.  So, for example, I could say that my neighbor is a werewolf and therefore crepuscular (which he is, by the way).

 

Exacerbate –  I have never heard anyone use this in normal conversation except me . . and it took me ten years to be able to apply it in the appropriate context.  It means ‘makes worse’.  So, I could rightly say that whenever I try to fix anything, I would like to call Uncle Dickie because I always exacerbate the problem.

 

 

And, here are a few French words, whose sounds flow off the tongue and make me trip the light fantastic:

Chaumière, pronounced ‘show me air’.  This is a cottage.

I imagine that Hansel and Gretel lived in a chaumière au milieu d’un forêt . .

a cottage in the middle of a forest.

Epoustouflant, pronounced ‘eh poos too flan’.  It means terrific.

Ces mots sont epoustouflants! . . these words are terrific!

L’isoloir, pronounced ‘lee zull wa . .r   .  It means voting booth,

so I will never get to use this word, ever . . but, it sounds cool!

 

There are more, but, because of my advanced age, I am having a hard time identifying them between senior moments.   So, I am going to have to leave it at that . . .