Saturday 26 June 2010 — This is more than 14 years old. Be careful.
It is said that English has about a quarter million words. So it surprises me when I can’t find a word I want.
For example, we have a bunch of words that mean, “tastes good”: delicious, scrumptious, delectable, appetizing, yummy, toothsome, and mouthwatering. So why is there no word that means just, “tastes bad”? We have disgusting, unpleasant, gross, and disagreeable, but none of those apply only to eating. Even the literal distasteful or unsavory are almost quaint when applied to food.
And if scary means “fills me with fear”, as do terrifying, frightening, horrifying, and hair-raising, where is the word that means “fills me with anxiety”? Unnerving or nerve-racking seem to be the closest I can find, but even those seem closer to fear than to anxiety.
Time for some new words?
Comments
I think that unsavory, disgusting, unappetizing, rancid, and the like are all useful "bads".
For anxiety, what about "worrisome"?
Any help will be appreciated.
I think "worrisome" and "unpalatable" are the best suggestions so far.
There's a word I'm missing: "Consider which decision to make." (Usually out of a set of decisions.) In Hebrew we have a word for this, but in English I don't know one.
For "fills me with anxiety" we have "Nailbiting" and for "tastes bad" - "fulsome" (cloying, too much), "foul", "rank" and "disgusting".
Readers of Roald Dahl may like to use some of the Big Friendly Giant's vernacular "foulsome, rotsome, sickable, disgusterous, maggotwise repulsant and filthing".
For anxious, what about trepidatious or trepidation?
HTH, Krys
Rich Hall coined the term Sniglets and wrote a few books on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniglet
A few sniglets lists:
http://bertc.com/subfour/truth/sniglets.htm
http://www.alphadictionary.com/fun/sniglets.html
Easy: deciding
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