On my favourite adjective:

Everyone has that list of adjectives stowed somewhere in the back of their brains that describe them-- you know the one I'm talking about. The one that you pull out when the interviewer asks you to describe yourself, or the one you use on your twitter profile.

Some people have their favourite adjectives, adjectives that they strive to be, adjectives that, in their fantasy moments, they want their favourite eloquent writer to use in describing them.

I've had many adjectives thrown at me over the years, both gently and full force. I don't rightly know which ones fit and which ones don't, though I think they all kind of do in one way or another.

My favourite adjective, one that I'd love to have attributed to me, and that I consider to be the most gorgeous, would be lovely.

Dictionary.com describes lovely as "of a great moral or spiritual beauty" or "having a beauty that appeals to the heart or mind as well as to the eye, as a person or a face", but I see it as more, or it's always appeared as more in my mind. In searching lovely's etymology, love comes from the Old English word "lufu", which means "love, affection and friendliness", with the suffix "-ly" denoting "having qualities of, appropriate to, fitting".

So perhaps something more akin to "having qualities of love", or similar to love-- "-ly" is used frequently to describe how something is done ("weakly", "thankfully").

But I think of lovely as a word that implies the evocation of love: when you describe something as "lovely", you speak of it as something that inspires love for it, and maybe for the things around it.

To me, I feel a few complimentary adjectives are fleeting, backhandedly offensive-- "pretty", "handsome", "gorgeous" are all words that are attributed to outside looks, which fade. Beauty comes and goes, and there is a standard of facial structure, body mass that is wordlessly attributed to these words.

But lovely implies that you are lovable in spite of being damaged, broken, not necessarily beautiful, unimaginative, blunt, unsure, lost. It is in spite of everything that you are and that you aren't, you are still lovable, capable of evoking love.

What's your favourite adjective?

A.