This Year's Winner

Whim.

Aware that this may officially mark the year when the annual "most beautiful word in the English language" contest became more about choosing simply my favorite of the entries than the technically beautiful, I still cannot resist the selection of whim. A fancy. A sudden desire. The capricious idea. I too wish to fly to the moon on a whimsy.

Salacious was close ("a salacious rooster of a little man"), and the definition of Gallant is almost beyond compare ("a paramour"), but it has been a most whimsical summer. I so love the English language, that it has a word such as WHIM. This is my conclusion. It is a word almost impossible to say without smiling, as well as being a fairly decent four-letter description of many of these Friday nights. Happy days, boys, as the Ryanair stewardess once insisted over Guinness at Oliver St. John Gogarty's in Dublin. Happy fuckin' days.