Silly Words

What word do you hate? I’m not talking about swear words, but every day, run-of-the-mill words.

A word that bugs me is “silly.” I don’t know why, but it’s been that way since I was in high school. If someone called me “silly,” I felt slighted. If a review called a movie “silly,” I avoided it.

I never use it in conversation and have used it sparingly in my writing. Instead, I’ll use goofy, playful, or absurd (depending on the seriousness of the work). I dislike the word that much.

My girlfriend dislikes the “F” word—fart. Whenever our son says it, she cringes and asks him to say “toot” or “poot” instead. Both sound so silly absurd coming from a teenage boy, so he’ll offer to say, “ripped one” or “cut one” in its place. I think those are much worse.

“Moist” gained a lot of negative attention over the past twenty years with comedians and celebrities speaking out against it. My daughter almost retches when she hears it. I find it silly strange since the word is perfecting acceptable when referring to cake. Would you rather have moist or dry cake? Only psychopaths like dry cake.

Word aversion is the irrational dislike of a word’s sound or feel that’s unrelated to its meaning. I understand it’s silly ridiculous that I don’t like silly, since I’m not bothered at all by fart or moist.

So which word(s) do you dislike?