Ok, bear with me on this one.
I hate the word 'Radish'. There I said it. It's such a monumentally displeasing word. Say it a few times with me. Radish. Radish. Radish. Really get your mouth around the sounds of the word. Radish. Radish. Radish. Yuk. Doesn't it leave a bitter taste in your mouth? Doesn't the sound of its composition send shivers cascading down your spine, make your skin crawl? The two composite parts 'Rad' and 'Ish' just don't fit comfortably side by side at all. They don't lend themselves to being said consecutively. The word just doesn't work on any level. It even looks wierd.
I've nothing against radishes themselves. In fact, horseradish sauce is very nice with a side of beef. I'm not even averse to them in salads, say. A very nice garnish. But the word itself is frankly disgusting, and might even be driving me to giving up radishes in terms of my consumption, for fear I have to say their names. Awful. Who looked at a radish and thought "Let's call this a radish, yeah, that's a nice name for something." Because that's what happened. Some idiot thought 'radish' would be a nice thing to call something.
Sorry about that. But I suppose that's the beauty of language. One man's 'Radish' (horrible) is another man's 'Lanolin' (pleasant).
Please do let me know words that offend you from a purely aesthetic or aural point of view.
A few more poems (short), to sweeten the atmosphere.
11. His skin, slack. His eyes, vapid. His breath, dense with raw meat. I miss you, dad.
12. A lamb grazes in a field. A hat falls, far away. The two events are unconnected.........?
13. Twenty three tiny chicks enter a bar. They implode. It was a bar in outer space.
14. DNA - Do Not Ask. 'Incorrect,' says the schoolmaster, exhaling.
15. One day, in Rome, Gaius Maximus is out walking. He sees a dormouse. Tasty looking thing. Put it on a stick, didn't he?
16. Funny, thought the plastic surgeon, I shouldn't have breasts. Someone, somewhere had made a serious miscalculation.
Sleep well. I may not with the rattling cough someone is producing downstairs.
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2 comments:
Try the French 'radis'
or the Spanish 'radaba' (I think)
Avoid however 'Rettich' (German) as that makes even radish sound melifluous
'Radis' is far more satisfying indeed (even if 'Rettich' is like the long lost evil twin of Radish, who has been locked in a basement for years and fed only fish heads.)
However, it may seem a little pretentious to adopt a French accent specifically for whenever I want to say 'radish'... It may not though, and we may start something very special (ie. the erasure of 'radish' from common vernacular.)
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