The charity Education Action is trying to raise awareness of children who do not have access to education because of conflict or displacement, and they are doing it by asking people what their favourite word is.

To drum up some interest, they have been asking MPs and authors about their favourite words.

I think the list of authors’ favourite words is better, although I haven’t heard of most of the authors. What I found interesting was that most authors seemed to have chosen words for their sound while MPs tended to chose words for their meaning. Not only that, the authors’ choices seemed more personal and the MPs’ choices had a whiff of focus group about them.

Its a bit like those polls of summer holiday reading lists or when a politician is on Desert Island Discs – you feel they are inhibited by a need to say something which makes them look better somehow, so they are saying their favourite word is “yes”, “laughter”, “love”, “smile” or “freedom”. The exceptions are Boris Johnson (“carminative” – a sort of flatulence cure) and George Galloway (“indefatigability”. Made me laugh anyway)

So, a few examples of favourite words:

Authors

• Cherubim – Barbara Trapido
• Supernacular – Ben Schott
• Mellifluous – Christopher Brookmyre
• Crepuscular – Deborah Moggach
• Bubble – Kerry Maxwell
• Serendipity – Lloyd Jones

MPs

• Axiomatic – Andrew MIller
• Hello – Denis McShane
• Papagena – Gisela Stuart
• Fellowship – Hazel Blears
• Growler – Jeff Ennis

Bloggers?

You tell me!

Personally I don’t think I have a favourite word. I tend towards liking onomatopoeic words, but if I try to think of one I can’t get the word “gusset” out of my brain so that’ll do for now