At the time that I made the list, the words I used were, for the most part, entirely devoid of context and were just awful on their own. However, I have since learned that context can make a word just as awful as the word itself being genuinely gross. It is for that reason that I feel as though I need to add two more entries to the list of Words that Suck. Here they are:
1. Lush: Adjective
(of vegetation) growing luxuriantly : lush greenery and cultivated fields. See note at profuse .
• opulent and luxurious : a hall of gleaming marble, as lush as a Byzantine church.
• (of color or music) very rich and providing great sensory pleasure
This is a word that I never particularly liked, but I also never thought particularly awful. That is before Twilight's fourth installment, Breaking Dawn, hit the shelves. I have not read the book entirely myself, but I have had the pleasure of reading the particularly horrific gory scene in which the heroine is giving birth to the demon child of her vampire husband. It is told from the perspective of the jealous best friend/spurned lover/werewolf as he watches the vampire try to spare her life after her vampire C-section by turning her into a vampire as well. And it contains this gem:
"It was like he was kissing her, brushing his lips at her throat, at her wrists, into the crease at the inside of her arm. But I could hear the lush tearing of her skin as his teeth bit through, again and again, forcing venom into her system at as many points as possible..."
Upon reading this I was overcome with a powerful urge to crawl out of my skin. Lush tearing? Eww. Gross. This scene was graphic enough as it was, what with the heroine "vomiting fountains of blood" and her spine snapping. I did not need to be able to hear the exact sound that teeth sinking into skin makes, thank you very much. I will put off my growing need for a year long shower for now and proceed to the second word.
2. Cloying: Adjective
disgust[ing] or sicken[ing] with an excess of sweetness, richness, or sentiment
I came upon this word in the lesser known title Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne. The particular instance in which this word is used for great evil is during a scene where the young Prince Maric is in the woods wrestling with one of the soldiers who had just murdered his mother, the queen, in front of him and is trying to secure the same fate for Maric. Managing to get the upper hand, Maric, frightened, desperate, and angry, begins hitting the man's head repeatedly against the root of a tree. That is where we get this special little something:
"Tears welled up in his eyes, and he choked on his words: "She was your queen and you killed her!" He slammed the head again, still harder. This time the man stopped fighting back. A cloying, meaty smell assaulted his nostrils. His hands were covered in thick, fresh blood that was not his own..."
So um... ew? This wasn't even a word I knew existed until I read it here, and then it immediately made me want to die. Is it even possible to think of a less pleasant way to invoke the smell of this man's brain juice oozing out all over a tree root? I had to put the book down for a while before the heebie jeebies calmed down.
So there is my extended list, in which I learn that context can murder a word. And now I am going to go scrub my skin with bleach for a while in hopes of being clean again. I will leave you with a couple more words that I feel deserve an honorable mention on the list as well:
Abscess
Weeping
Creamy
Weeping
Creamy
Put them together in different combinations for extra horror that's fun for the whole family!
1 comment:
Combine em though.
With a lush rip, I tore at the creamy abscess and softly began weeping as a cloying odor burned at my nose.
That's not so
that's...
what did I type.
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