Thursday 6 September 2012

By The Pricking Of My Thumbs...

Wickedly Wicked

Wicked!  I just love that word. It conjures up images of witches and wizards for me and I always think of the late Ray Bradbury‘s brilliant novel “Something wicked this way comes”. He took his inspiration from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, of course.
Nowadays it is used by young people as a replacement for the word ‘brilliant’ or something similar. It is also associated with the word ‘cool’ – as in something or someone being ‘hip’ or current. Whoever said language was not a living breathing changeable entity!
Anyway, I digress. What I mean to talk about is the original proper use of the word. When I looked it up in my dictionary it said it meant evil or sinful. But then there was a whole host of harsh words from ‘abominable’ to ‘abased’ to ‘shameful’ and ‘vicious’. In fact over fifty similar words! Many of which I have used time and again in my own supernatural thriller writing.

But nothing says something evil quite as succinctly as ‘wicked’. It goes best with villainous characters and horrific deeds.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.” Voltaire said.  A wonderful quote, indeed... I think one could weave an entire story around some of the quotes about wickedness.
A good word like this can be as helpful in horror/thriller writing as love is in romance writing. But it can equally be much overused and abused.

Do you have favourite words that you feel inclined to use more often than not?

 

15 comments:

  1. Wicket IS a good word. I mean, could she be anything other than the Wicked Witch of the West?

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  2. It's funny isn't it how wicked has come to have two such different meanings. I agree, it is a good word!

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  3. When I first began writing, many moons ago, one of my favorite words was nonchalant. I don't use it anymore, because I think I wore it out. :)

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  4. Wicked is lovely.
    I also like using slither and vanish. They crop up in my writing so often I sometimes have to delete them!

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  5. Hehehe! I'm from New England. Here, wicked means very, very, very. As in, OMG that cake was wicked good.

    I'm rather fond of the word defenestration and use it at every possible opportunity, which sadly doesn't amount to much. Being a thriller writer, you may have more opportunity. Pair it with some exsanguination and I'm on board. ;)

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  6. I ooveruse the word 'cake'. I also overuse the word's 'I'm', 'going', 'to', 'have' and 'some'.

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  7. Hi Pat! Thank you for becoming #301! Writing saved my life too, in fact I think it saves me every day. As for the word "wicked" here in New England it's been used for ages as slang for "cool," "neat," "awesome," "outstanding" or any variation thereof. There are so many words I like, but I most overuse the simple word "and."

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  8. Hey there! I popped over from Katy's bloffee. And I love the word wicked. It is so full of intent, isn't it? Some people seem to be understandably rotten... rotten in a sympathetic way... but wicked is rotten with meanness.

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  9. Wicked is a great word. I am from the "cool" generation and I still tend to use the work too often in conversation :)
    I'm sure I over use several words in writing but my worse, and most overused, is to start sentences with "As"
    As he..., As they... UGH!

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  10. Great post. I love wicked too. My BFF is from MA and tends to overuse it in her daily vocabulary. LOL.

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  11. Wicked is a great word. But I like to mix it up a bit. Vile seems pretty succinct with the dictionary definition of wicked and not the teen's "cool" version. Something about it rhyming with bile makes it that much more evil.

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  12. Ooh, I love wicked, too. Another word I like that I don't get to use enough is "unsavory." I love it because it's more like saying what something isn't than what it is -- as if it might be too terrible to speak of but that adds to its unsavoriness (which I'm NOT sure is actually a word but I'm using it anyway).

    Anyway, just stopping in from Bloffee to say HI!

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  13. Hmm no words come to mind! Lol. Maybe mplode... But it's a hard one to get in there at the perfect time

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  14. Oh, I definitely do have those words, yet I'm drawing a blank right now (of course). I enjoy the word wicked. Just read "Something Wicked" and "Farenheit" recently and got completely hooked on Bradbury. Can't believe how long it took me to read his work!

    Also, I can't see or hear the title "Something Wicked This Way Comes" without having that whole part run through my head ("By the pricking of my thumbs..."

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