READ: My Favorite Words Are a Survival Kit

These are a few of my favorite words!

In her book Dear Writer, Maggie Smith (the living American author, not the deceased British actress) offers a writing exercise that sounds charming: draft a poem or essay using your favorite words.

Sounds fun, huh? An assignment that suggests you’ll write something sweet, tender, and deeply revealing.

But then I made a list of my favorite words:

Serendipity, flabbergasted, gobsmacked, clusterfuck, hogwash, nitwit, falderal, hoopla, shenanigans

How the hell do I work all of those into a single piece?

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Let’s start with the prettiest word on my list, serendipity.

It’s what people claim when they need life to feel like a charming coincidence, as though there’s some higher meaning or force pulling the strings, instead of an endless series of near-misses and bits of luck, good and bad.

Serendipity implies life is a rom com, not an endless series of accidents and happy mistakes.

Alas, it’s the only word on my list you could embroider on a pillow.

As for flabbergasted and gobsmacked, I get that they are practically identical twins. But I love them both. Why?

Because they are very musical ways of saying “What the fuck is happening?” Describing a negative physical reaction to shock and surprise in the most beautiful way.

Flabbergasted is what you feel when you realize some people really do believe the world is flat.

Gobsmacked is what you feel when you hear a grown adult say, with confidence, that the 2020 election was stolen.

The beauty of these words is that they are great fun to say. They sound like cartoons. But the emotions they represent? Not so much.

And then comes the word that feels as though it was invented to describe this particular point in 21^st century American life: clusterfuck.

Because today’s world isn’t simply screwed up. It is a menagerie of clusterfucks so entangled, one wonders if we will ever find our way out.

As for hogwash, I know using it makes me sound like your grumpy yet non-threatening grandfather. Which may be why I love it so much!

“Hogwash” is a way to say “bullshit” while still minding your manners. Trust me. Use it the next time you’re arguing with someone who really isn’t worth your time.

It doesn’t just say “you’re wrong.” It says, “You’re so ridiculously wrong that I can’t even get angry enough to waste an insult on you!”

Nitwit is a wonderful word. It’s insulting without being overly ugly. Similar to hogwash, it lets you call a fool a fool without being cruel.

It’s also wonderfully dismissive. And because it rhymes, it may be one of the most charming insults ever.

Falderal and hoopla aren’t quite as aggressive as the other words on my list. But they still aren’t words you’ll find in a valentine.

Falderal is a word I use when I want to describe fussy, pointless nonsense. Frills. Performative clutter.

For example, much of what goes on in Hollywood could be described as falderal.

Hoopla is falderal with a bullhorn. It suggests a very big investment with very little return.

Hoopla was Trump’s ridiculous military birthday parade. Trump’s “Board of Peace.” My 2016 smackdown with “Thindy Brady.”

Then take hoopla, up the ridiculous factor by ten, and you have shenanigans.

And I can think of no better example than Trump’s sycophantic cabinet meetings, where his secretaries take turns kissing his ass with truly insane compliments and brown-nosing.

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So here’s my final attempt, Maggie, using all nine words in one short, honest paragraph:

I still believe in serendipity, but it’s harder every year.

The world feels like one endless clusterfuck, hijacked by a nitwit and filled with people buying his hogwash as wisdom.

Every day brings new hoopla, fresh falderal, another headline so absurd it leaves me gobsmacked and flabbergasted.

How can we still be pretending these shenanigans are normal?

There.

That’s the piece. Not sweet and tender. Not poetry. Not an essay. But I did it.

So yes, Maggie, perhaps the point all along was, favorite words do reveal character. Maybe putting them together is less about pretty writing, and more about writing something that sounds like you.

And I get it. Apparently, I am someone who uses vocabulary as a coping mechanism.

So I told you mine.

What are your favorite words?

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