It’s March, and time Marches on. Let’s steal a March on it by looking at another Word I Hate.
Knickers
Many undergarments have ordinary-sounding names. Even something intentionally sexy, like a teddy (which is, of course, short for “teddington”) can have an unsexy name. But knickers? Nothing about it suggests something I want to get involved with. Nothing about it says “here is a thing that might attractively adorn a love interest”. It is even worse than “panties”, which frankly sound like a children’s name for pants and which should not be allowed in any romantic context ever.
Knickers starts with a deadly “kn” letter combination, a piece of linguistic showjumping that automatically takes the pleasure out of a word and gives it an ungainly appearance. And after that the rest of the word is all clacking c’s and k’s and a harsh sibilant ending. No smooth sounds here, no silky suggestions of a soft undergarment concealing the downstairs pleasure gardens of a lover or casual acquaintance. No. Just hard noises and an offputting spelling.
Knickers to it, I say.
13 comments on “Words I Hate, Part 2”
Reasons I like this post:
1) Sibilant – what a joyous word, it’s being added to my vocabulary as we speak
2) Downstairs pleasure gardens – giggle giggle…
3) One of several reasons Reuben and I now refer to them as ‘nuh-nuhs’ rather than the aforementioned disastrous word.
Reasons I like your comment:
1) Repeats the word “sibilant”
2) Introduction of the phrase “nuh-nuhs”, which this whole page had been lacking
3) Neatly ordered list
I feel as though anyone else coming into this conversation would just ruin it, and they wouldn’t understand all this blatant back-slappery.
(sibilant).
Oh, now, NOW, you introduce the word “slappery”. This couldn’t get any better. Nobody else can join in now. There’s no way they could catch up. They couldn’t reach these dizzying heights.
You’re right, but luckily everyone is so scared by our dazzling display of the English language that they daren’t intrude.
It makes my jowels wibble with delight.
To the untrained observer it looks like nobody else is sufficiently interested to comment on this, but we know better.
Given that I represent most of the authority on comments and comment-based criticism, 95% and counting, I can safely say that it is more fear and self-loathing that is preventing others from passing comment rather than a lack of interest.
Sometimes you must offer your hand down to those who cannot scale the electrifying heights you easily surpass.
Sorry, did you two self appreciating miscreants say something?
Oh look who stopped grouting his house for one moment to come and slum it in da beans!
Yeah, despite your lofty ideas, I’ve come to slum it with you for a bit.
Was that some sort of house-based pun? If so, you make wish to take another extended leave of absence.
Exactly. The last thing we need is a carpet of wall-to-wall house or DIY puns. You can shelf those right now. It’s a sign of a lack of humour and you’re just painting over the cracks.
I think, before this descends into some sort of Big Dave Puns-plosion, we should move into Words I Hate, Part 3…