In Celebration of the Anglo-Saxon Loogie

Last week I participated in the Bernard Pivot Blogfest, hosted by Nicole Ducleroir at One Significant Moment At A Time. The blogfest was a huge success, with around 150 participants, not to mention being great fun. Thanks, again, to Nicole for hosting!

One of the questions, though, got me thinking.

What is your least favorite word?

The first page of Beowulf; courtesy of Wiki Commons

Some common words included:

• moist (I think this was the most common)
• some assorted swear words
• vain/vein
• flesh
• can't
• sorry
• lush
• breath/breathe
• no
• hate
• maybe
• snot
• glowered
• chuckle

And, I had a short conversation with Leigh over email discussing the "loogie-like" quality of one of my FAVORITE words: slew. I still defend my word, whether it will involve a big wad of spittle or not!

Okay, besides the negative connotations with many of these words, most of them have something else in common. With the exception of moist (which I will NOT defend), vain and lush, these words all have Germanic/Old English roots (okay, well, technically glower might have been borrowed really early from Old Scandinavian, but it's not French, okay?)

Why do we oppose our strong Anglo-Saxon linguistic roots? Favorite words included those pulled from Greek, Latin, French, Spanish (one of mine was Yiddish, but I suppose we shouldn't look at mine, eh?).

My writing teacher last semester repeatedly said, "If there's something you can say with an Anglo-Saxon word, use it." And I agree. Otherwise it can sound pretentious (which is from French) or, perhaps, highfalutin.

An example, perchance:

The monarch's confidant departed for foreign countries, carrying beautiful presents of silver and gold.

Compare:

The king's friend left for far-away lands, bearing shimmering gifts of silver and gold.

Now, how do these different sentences make you feel? Does the second inspire more emotion? Can you imagine the situation better/differently? With a couple exceptions, the words in the first example have foreign roots, and the words in the second have Anglo-Saxon roots.

Nutmeg seeds; courtesy of Wiki Commons

This may not be a popular view, but I think native English speakers have stronger associations with Anglo-Saxon vocabulary than other vocabulary (and I restrict this to native-English speakers only because I cannot speak from another view point). Other words are colorful, perhaps even more poetic, but they are the spices of our writing dish. You're not going to open your spice cabinet and eat the entire tub of Nutmeg, are you? (It's toxic in high doses! Don't do it!)

We shouldn't do that with our language, either.

Enjoy the meat, and flavor lightly.

And if it means talking about a slew of loogies instead of copious saliva then so be it :)

Do you agree? What's your favorite Anglo-Saxon word? Not sure if your word's Anglo-Saxon? Check here.