The beauty of words...

During my lunch hour today I was browsing the BBC website and came across an article on the public's top 50 favourite words. Now, I love words more than many, with my passion for reading, and writing poetry and the like... but browsing the list made me realise my vocabulary is sorely lacking in variety. As an avid blogger, I constantly strive to make my writing enjoyable and readable, and consciously avoid overuse of the same words in an attempt to make the text flow... but I do struggle to dig out the correct terms from the deep dark recesses of my brain on numerous occasions... so I've decided to try and learn a new word a day. I've added a 'word of the day' widget to my iGoogle homepage, and hope that my writing improves as a result.

Anyway, another realisation from my reading the article, was that it dawned on me that there are some truly beautiful words in the English language. A few caught my attention, possibly thanks to my tendency to lean towards to whimsical and poetic... so I decided to share some of them along with some others I looked up.

• Petrichor - The smell of rain on dry earth. Who knew that someone, somewhere, sometime, put so much importance on something so basic yet pleasurable, that they decided to put a name to it.
• Crepsucular - Of or like twilight. I wonder if you can describe a person's eyes as this? Or perhaps a time in someone's life?
• Susurrus - A soft murmuring or whispering sound. I like the sound of this word, and it's meaning.
  
• Chatoyant - Something that glows from deep within, like a cat's eye, or star sapphires, or highly polished hard woods. Again, could you describe a person as chatoyant? Glowing from within?
  
• Mellifluous - Sweet and smooth; generally used of a person's voice, tone or writing style.
• Ephemeral - Lasting for a short period of time.
• Moiety -  One of two equal parts, a half. 
• William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra:
  The death of Antony
  Is not a single doom; in the name lay
  A moiety of the world. 
• Sempiternal - Seemingly everlasting or eternal. 

Makes me want to write some poetry... I wonder if I can fit all those words into one piece? Hmm... watch this space!