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?
