Words We Love 2025
Valentine's Day is a perfect day to express lexical love!
Love manifests in a myriad of forms, many of which are explored on the Hallmark holiday celebrating romance and adoration. While love is in the air, why not wax eloquent about the words that hold a special place in your heart?
Presenting the Words We Love Substack Carnival! What is a carnival, you ask? In this sense, a carnival is a tradition carried over from the Golden Age of blogging, when a group of bloggers would collaborate on anthologies of thematic or related posts all connected to a central hub. Now that Substack hosts a plethora of amazing educators and writers, the time is ripe to come together for a vocabulary-rich Valentine’s Day!
I invited some of my favorite Substackers to write about one word that they love, sharing both definitions and details about what makes the word special to them. What words do we love right now?
APOPHENIA
Kate Fisher highlights a phenomenon more of us are prone to than we realize.
AUTOMATICITY
Mike McGibbon of Mathchops reveals one of the all-time secrets to success.
CUPIDITY
Erin Billy of Most Important SAT Vocabulary shares a word you better not get wrong on Valentine’s Day!
DISBURSEMENT
Dave Peterson of Scholarship GPS delivers an important financial term.
LIKE
McGee Francis English explores a very flexible part of the lexicon.
PEDESTRIAN
Deena Viviani of Deena Writes shares a word that is less boring than it might suggest.
PERSISTENCE
The College Road Newsletter explains how persistence carries a special meaning in the context of college
PETRICHOR
Rachel Boyce of English Language Lab shares an evocative word for a phenomenon you know but didn’t have a name for.
RECONCILE
Kevin George of Business English Bits delivers a word with high utility in many settings.
QUAGMIRE
Sri Murthy of Confident in English shared a fun word for a situation that is not so fun.
We hope you absolutely adored this year’s Words We Love. Share your own most beloved words in the comments. Happy Valentine’s Day!
“Love is the most important word in the English language—and the most confusing." —Gary Chapman