English words

I like the word "gargantuan".

I recalled watching Kill Bill 2 and the assassin Elle Driver was telling the dying and poisoned Budd the following memorable line:

"The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan. You know, I've always liked that word...”gargantuan"... so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence."

The above line has been sticking in my mind for the longest time. Because it is true. There are some English words that always sound so classy or special. Like they are too good for the normal English lexicon.

For example, "I waited at the bus stop and spent a fruitless hour waiting for the bus. By the time it arrived, I was hot, frustrated and was tempted to hang myself to end the suffering."

The sentence above was quite normal. It did not really excite you really because the words are too plain. "frustrated", "hot" and "fruitless" are everyday words. But there are words which one could substitute to make the sentence more exciting; words always sound nice to me.

"The scorching sun beat mercilessly down on the bus-stop, bathing hapless commuters in its unrelenting heat. Minutes seemed to inch at a snail's pace as I craned my neck to look in increasing despondency into the distance, hoping beyond hope to see a vision of the bus. And when the bus finally arrived an hour later, the bus driver found himself facing a sweat-drenched man with misery in his eyes and suicide in his thoughts."

Always love the word "scorching". Scorching, scorching. Doesn't it sound good? And the word "despondency". So rarely for me to use them in a sentence nowadays. Everyone wants sentences to be short and sweet these days, so we ended up with "the weather is hot and I feel like killing myself when the bus showed up an hour later". Everybody is ashamed to use flowery language nowadays as if using short and dare I say, "economical" sentences is a sign of professionalism and efficency. What a bloody waste.