This is Daniel Tammet's unlikely and delightful word choice in describing a conversation about numbers with a woman he was tutoring in mathematics.
My favorite of these might be the sardonic new lyric for "The Saga of Jenny," sung by Lauren Bacall, no less: Poor Lenny Ten gifts too many The curse of being versatile To show how bad the curse is Will need a lot of verses And take a little Weill The new book is, in short, more of a gallimaufry than the first, to borrow a delightful word this expert wordsmith uses himself at one point.
The art is cartoony, in pen and ink with bright watercolors, and the book's layout borrows from comic strips as well; the narrative is cleverly visualized in a succession of softly edged panels teeming with delightful action words, like "raar," "flick," "splosh" and "guzzle".
The delightful Italian word "ghiribizzo" means caprice or whim.
The answer lies in coprophagy, a delightful new word I've learned, which is the act of eating someone else's poop.
But best of all is plitter, the most delightful onomatopoeic of words.
Buchan has a delightful way with words, a flourish that is all the more welcome amid the rather drab police-speak employed by everyone else.
Dahl's books, which move along at a seductively brisk pace, are propelled by crisp verbs ("clambered," "chirruped," "rasped") and delightful made-up words ("swishfiggler," "snozzcumber," "Vermicious Knids").
But the glory of Brian O'Nolan is that he did pay attention, a precise delightful attention to words, and the fantastical whimsy -given leash - they will convey.
