Hello lovely students and welcome back to English with Lucy.
Today I'm going to share my love of the English language with you because I am a logophile.
What's a logophile?
It's somebody who loves words, somebody
who is drawn to words.
Today I'm going to share with you 15 of
my favourite words, the words that I find most beautiful in English.
Spoiler, lots of them are borrowed from other languages.
I'm going to give you their pronunciation, definitions, examples.
Words that I think we
should all use more often.
I've selected these words because I find that they roll off the tongue, or at
least some of them do, and others just have really beautiful meanings.
To help you with your English learning journey even more, I have created a free
PDF that goes along with this lesson.
This lesson contains the 15 words we're
going to discuss, plus 15 of the ugliest words in the English language!
I thought it would be really funny to have that contrast there.
If you'd like to download that PDF, the 15 most beautiful and ugliest words in
the English language according to English with Lucy, all you have to do is click on
the link in the description box, enter your name and your email address, you
sign up to my mailing list, and the PDF arrives directly in your inbox.
After that, you automatically receive my free weekly lesson PDFs, plus all of my
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It's a free service, you can unsubscribe
at any time.
Right, let's get started with word number one.
Appealing, appealing.
I love that long E sound.
Appealing, appealing.
This means attractive or interesting.
To me, it sounds slightly flirtier than
just saying something or someone is beautiful.
They're appealing, I'm interested in them.
An example: His rich vocabulary made him sound so appealing.
This is actually a word that my mother uses quite a lot.
If she sees something delicious or smells some nice food, she will always say,
that looks so appealing.
Number two, ineffable, ineffable.
This means too great or too beautiful to describe in words.
Something so wonderful that you can't express how wonderful it is.
It's ineffable.
An example: When I heard of their
pregnancy, I was filled with ineffable joy.
Number three, quite different, nefarious, nefarious.
I love that air sound.
I know lots of learners of English
struggle with that ‘eh’ sound.
You're always taught to pronounce it as
eh, uh, eh, uh, eh.
However, I have a little pronunciation
secret that I use with my students, and my students tend to find it a lot easier
to think of it as an extension of an ‘eh’ sound.
Eh, eh, just bring the volume down
slightly at the end.
Eh, eh, nefarious.
Now, nefarious is a beautiful word in my opinion, but it doesn't necessarily have
a very beautiful meaning.
It means criminal or extremely bad.
I find this word appealing because I find it very expressive.
An example: They hacked into my bank account and used the funds for nefarious purposes.
Word number four has a story behind it for me.
The word is ethereal, ethereal, and it means extremely light and beautiful or
seeming to belong to another more spiritual world.
Now, obviously this word as it is, is beautiful and the meaning is beautiful too.
But what I think is really funny about it is that to me, it represents how
difficult English pronunciation and spelling can be.
And as you might have noticed, the way English words are spelt often gives no
indication as to how they ought to be pronounced.
Ethereal is a clear example of that for me.
When I was young, I remember being seven, eight, nine years old, reading this word
in a book and simply presuming that it would be pronounced ethereal, ethereal,
not real, ethereal.
I was always quite shy at school, but one
day I felt particularly confident and I put my hand up in English class and I
told the teacher that I found something to be ethereal.
Luckily, it was a very sweet English
teacher and they didn't shoot me down or make fun of me.
They just giggled and told me they could see why I pronounced it like that, but
it's actually ethereal.
So that's why this word is very deserving
of being on this list because I think it has a really beautiful story behind it
for me at least.
An example of ethereal in a sentence.
At sunrise, the London skyline almost looks ethereal.
Number five.
If you know me well, if you've followed
me for a long time, you might understand why I love this word so much.
It's epiphany, epiphany.
It means a sudden and surprising moment
of realisation.
And three years ago, when I started
creating online English courses, I named my first pronunciation course after this
word, epiphany.
I've since changed the name of my online
language school to simply englishwithlucy.com because
it's easier for everyone,
but that word epiphany still means a lot to me.
I want my students to have an epiphany, a moment of realisation and understanding
when it comes to their language skills and their pronunciation.
An example, when she took the course, she had an epiphany, and everything became clear.
Number six.
It's short, it's sweet, it's angst.
It's a feeling of great worry or concern about your situation or your life.
And you often hear teenage angst.
I wrote emotional poetry when I was full
of teenage angst.
Number seven, euphoria, euphoria.
I think it's the name of a TV show.
This means an extremely strong feeling of
excitement or happiness that usually only lasts a short while.
An example: after receiving the letter of acceptance, I was in a state of euphoria.
Number eight, cherish, cherish.
I actually met someone the other day
whose first name was Cherish and she really deserved that name.
She was so lovely.
This is a verb meaning to love someone or
something very much and to want to protect them or it.
An example, I will always cherish the letter he wrote to me before he passed away.
Number nine is eternity, eternity.
And this simply means time without end.
For example, a mother's love lasts for eternity.
Number 10, quintessence, quintessence.
You may have heard this in its adjective form before, quintessential, which is
also very beautiful.
But I think this one is used less
frequently and it should be used more frequently because it's a very lovely
word, quintessence.
It means the perfect example of something.
If you see a perfect country cottage with beautiful light stone and roses up it,
you can say that it is the quintessence of an English country cottage.
My 11th beautiful word is faeces.
Faeces, I'm joking.
It's not faeces.
That means poop.
I just, I don't know.
I listen to my intrusive thoughts.
Then number 11 is plethora, plethora.
And this one really does roll off the tongue.
It means an amount that is greater than is needed or can be used.
For example, the lesson PDF contains a plethora of information.
We're implying that there's almost slightly too much information there.
Maybe in a good way, just so much information, more than you could ever
take in, a plethora of information.
Number 12, love this one.
I mean, I love all of them.
That's why I've put them in this list,
but I really like number 12, pristine, pristine.
This word is so expressive.
It means fresh and clean, as if new.
Her house was pristine.
And that's another one that my mother uses a lot in her house really is always pristine.
You could literally eat off my mother's floors.
I don't suggest you try to eat off my floors.
Number 13, surreptitiously, surreptitiously.
It means in a quick or secret way so that
people don't notice.
For example, she surreptitiously slid her
phone number under his napkin.
Napkin is another word for serviette.
Number 14, dulcet, dulcet.
Dulcet means sounding sweet or pleasant,
and it's often collocated with tones, dulcet tones.
If you're talking about somebody's dulcet tones, it means their sweet voice.
An example, I can always recognise her dulcet tones.
I can always recognise her lovely voice.
You might hear Brits using this one sarcastically.
If someone is speaking with a very loud and unpleasant voice, you might say,
ah, I know those dulcet tones well, or I recognise those dulcet tones.
Number 15, the last one is docile.
Docile.
I love that ‘O’ sound, docile.
This means quiet and easy to control, and
we often use it to talk about animals that have a very sweet nature.
An example, the puppy is calm and incredibly docile.
Said no puppy owner ever.
My puppy was docile for the first week,
and then it was chaos for a year and a half, and now he's docile again.
I can't believe he's nearly six.
Right, that's it for today's lesson.
I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learnt something.
Don't forget to download the PDF if you want to know the 15 words that I find to
be most ugly, most unpleasant to listen to in English.
And of course, there's a quiz as well.
The link for that is in the description box.
If you enjoyed this lesson, you enjoyed learning about the pronunciation,
expanding your vocabulary, you might find my 12-week English programmes to be up
your street.
We have the B1 programme, the B2
programme, and the C1 programme.
That's intermediate, upper intermediate,
and advanced.
I'll leave links so that you can explore
them and see if they're right for you in the description box.
I'd love to have you join.
In the programmes, we focus on grammar, vocabulary.
We weave pronunciation throughout.
We also have targeted pronunciation lessons.
And in B2 and C1, we have conversation analysis lessons.
The students absolutely love those.
I'd love you to join my amazing students
that always give such wonderful feedback.
Aren't they fantastic?
If you're interested in joining, just visit englishwithlucy.com.
All of the information's there.
I will see you soon for another lesson.