Mellifluous
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Mellifluous
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
What's unusual about lullaby?
If you Google lullaby, you get about eleven million hits.
As a comparison, duvet - a pretty mainstream word, I think - gets a little over six million, as does comforter. Bedstead falls short of a million, and eiderdown doesn't even hit two hundred thousand.
I'm starting to enjoy this now. It's becoming a highly addictive vehicle for procrastination.
Mattress - twenty million, making it twice as common as lullaby.
Pillow case scores a mere three million, and nursery rhyme gets a paltry one point two million. Snoring racks up fewer than four million.
I was talking to a journalist who reviews music for a national daily in the UK, and he was carping about Elvis Costello using the word porcelain in a song. His argument was that it was a wilfully obscure word that EC had only used because it rhymed.
I was shocked. This educated literate guy had simply never come across the word before - and he found it hard to believe that anyone else had. But I think this was just an instance of random distribution - it just so happened that my friend and the word porcelain had never coincided.
So maybe that's just the case with you, Sche, and lullaby - you've simply not encountered it. And as English is not your first language, why should you have, really?
Hi Mark,
Whilst I enjoyed your dissertaion on the poularity of certain words, I don't think you quite grasped the point of Scher's remark. It is not a claim that Lullaby is an unusual word, it is the opposite in fact. If you take a peak at some of the words posted on the preceding page I think you'll get the point :D
Really? Oh, well. Sorry. In that case, ignore that entire post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawkman
pnictogen
ethereal
---------------------
.....
Waves
paralysis
minimalism
Messuage
Theodicy!
Panic!
Paralysis and panic seem to go together, do I detect a theme? :D
Messiah
doppelganger
___________________
.....
Idiosyncrasies
onomatopoeia
I know one that will give you (possibly) the longest poem ever:
Mahabharata
yes ...Mahabharata also has a beautiful story and excellent philosophy of life 'Geeta' explained in it.
Paradise.
Noctivagant
somnambulist
Perihelion
Am I allowed "Mabinogion"?
Yes you are and it's a good one.
Quiver
misanthrope
cacophony
Ululation
calligraphy
Blunt.
susurration
Whiskey
Immemorial
calabash
Charlatan
Languid
prestidigitation
Ghazal
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Somebody had to.
galactosamine
...Mannequin...