NAFF

A Facebook friend shared the following:

I responded that I like SMALL WORDS even more than polysyllabic words.

Thus, the current challenge to identify my favorite little words.

My all-time favorite small word is SMARMY and I have written about it several times.  I once used "smarmy" in class and the instructor said he'd never heard the word--but he said it in a self-confident manner--to let me know that he doubted it being a word. I said, "It's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word." He responded, haughtily, "And what might it mean?" I answered, "Unctuous." One of my classmates groaned. The instructor said, "Then you should have used unctuous because obviously more people know unctuous than smarmy!" The groaning classmate said, "I don't know either one!"

Some one-syllable words I love:

naff
obtest
condign
gauche
arcane
sans
bollix
glean
simper
impugn
airling
eschew
limpid
pithy
tacit

naif

And, in yesterday's article I used "pawl" which I had not known until the previous day!