To be witty is to be sexy — or so a writer friend of mine asserts. Listening to her gush over a man whose choice of words gives her goosebumps and who makes her nerve ends tingle whenever she speaks with him, I realise that I am extremely guarded emotionally.

Yes, I appreciate witty repartee, greedily soak up unusual turns of phrase, and savour well-chosen words. But facility of language alone is not enough to bowl me over.

I would give up the exhilaration of trading quips and fielding sallies for cosy chats and warm conversations with a man who loves me. The former stimulates my intellect; the latter moves my heart.

Advising me not to temper my quirkiness for fear of frightening a man off, but to simply be myself:
"You're weird and wonderful, and he needs to see that."

Something only a best friend could say!

"Weird, wonderful and wacky," said a friend when I recounted what my best friend had said. "The three W's."

"In no particular order," chipped in another.

Found this, which I wrote in 2001:

It's funny how people always say that nobody's perfect, then act so perfectly shocked when they find out you aren't, either.

However, to be imperfect is one thing; to be unique, another. I can't decide whether uniqueness is a good or bad sign. After all, if you were so breathtakingly fantastic, surely you'd have prototype potential? If there's only one of you walking around, mightn't it signify the existence of some serious flaw that was never duplicated?

Lichen is actually a combination of fungi and blue-green algae. When these two get together, the resulting organism "behaves as a single independent plant", thus earning itself a name all its own.

As a child, I read Enid Blyton books and used to see lichen mentioned all the time, but I never knew exactly what it was. Now I do. I think I might be what they call a "slow learner". After all, it痴 taken me all these years to discover The True Meaning of Lichen.

* Source: The Encyclopedia of Malaysia

"My friend... he's not the straight type."

"You mean he's the crooked type?" I asked.

He grinned. "The curly type." Pause. "You knew what I meant, right?"

"Of course I knew. I was just being difficult."

"Well, you wouldn't want to be easy, would you?"

Wonderful site — random people talking about their favourite word and why it is their favourite. Reminds me why I love words so much. How could I ever pick a favourite?

However, there are at least three words I hate, simply because they are so difficult to spell: manoeuvre, diarrhoea, and mischievous.

From the latest issue of The Word Detective:

Dear Word Detective: Years ago I used a word that means a person who gives unwanted advice. I cannot, for the life of me, remember that word! Do you know? If so, I would like it back, please. —Randy

I feel your pain. There really ought to be an Office of Lost Words one could call in predicaments such as yours, those times when we know the perfect word exists and have even used it in the past, but, upon summoning it again, find that the little scamp has skittered down one of the rabbit holes of the mind, leaving us in the lurch. Perversely, the very aptness of the word often seems to make it especially elusive, and, while the lost word is rarely exotic, pawing through a dictionary or thesaurus almost never produces the fugitive. The upshot is intense frustration tinged with the suspicion that one's brain is going mushy. Speaking of neurology, I know a person who claims that looking down and slightly to the left helps her remember such things. I'd give her method a try, but I'm afraid that if it worked it would mean that my head is not properly attached, which would be far more depressing than misplacing one little word.

I think I'm in love. Yes, again. It is positively criminal to be able to write like that. Such talent should be outlawed.

Back to Poor Randy and the Lost Word: According to treasure hunter Evan Morris, the lost word was kibitz, which, he helpfully adds, "rhymes with lib hits".