There are certain words that make me wince.  In fact wince is one of them. It just sounds so, er ghastly (another one that I can’t stand the sound of).  Followed closely by moist and  yeasty (not even necessarily in conjunction) and irregardless which is a word that my husband uses and I am sure isn’t even real.

I am also not very partial to the words slacks and blouse and I absolutely hate it when people say space when they are talking about anything other than having air around them or the solar system. I don’t love the word sink and would replace it with basin every time even if it was not correct and I would never ever utter the word hankie, I would rather wipe my nose on my sleeve. Honestly.

Unlike a lot of people I don’t have a problem with the word panties (although I know a lot of you  just dry retched just then) but it was the most common word we gave to female underwear in South Africa where I grew up, so it sounds natural and normal to me.

But there are a whole host of words that I can’t say in public, not because I can’t stand the sound of them,  but because nobody other than my immediate family would know what I was talking about – like smoosh is ice cream that has been softened, and leeanza is lasagna and lawt is water.  Long stories with rich histories that make the words sound perfectly normal around the family dinner table but quite insane to the bystander.

Johanna Gohmman wrote in a hilariously funny article in Salon recently:

Maybe my father was disgusted at his children’s names – what other reason would he have to refer to my sister as Frog Face and me as Lana Banana Cabana Beach Pie ?

Are there words that you simply hate the sound of and are there words that you or your family have replaced?