What are your three favorite English words and why?

Answer 1

shrimp - because it makes me laugh every time I hear an American say it lollygagger - because it's fun to call people that when they're slow the f word - because it's always unmistakebly heard. You can even read peoples' lips when they say it without hearing it. And it feels good when you're mad. candelabra - In Spanish, my mother-tongue, it is almost the same (candelabro) but it sounds sooo different in English! The word mentally transports me to a dark remote castle with candles flickering all over the place. And this is so real that I almost feel scared and I giggle too. Must be nerves! :-) gibberish - I first came across this word in my late teen years. I was reading Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing and I'll never forget the chapter where the lady of the house, really aggravated at the time, hollers at someone who does not speak her own language and says something like "Don't speak that gibberish to me!". crapola - To me this slang word is just too funny. Again, in Spanish there is a similar word (crápula, meaning a naughty person in more ways than one and it is the special connotations that make it interesting, really) and "crapola" invariariably rings a bell to that other word in my mother-tongue.