Cool Words

What makes a word "cool"?

What makes a word “cool”? There's no single answer. A word can be defined as cool in several different ways, and knowing these paths will help you spot them.

Path 1: How it sounds. Some words may sound like they carry feelings on their own. Words that start with gl- (glimmer, glow, glint, gleam) and sl- words that refer to something slow or gross (slime, slog, slither). Words with soft consonants like L and R, paired with open vowels, can sound musical. Hard consonants like K, T, and P will sound sharp and snappy. The words mellifluous and luminous sound cool because they just roll off your tongue. Words like kerfuffle and brouhaha feel cool for the opposite reason: they sound like what they mean.

Path 2: It fills a gap. Unlike Greek, which has a rich vocabulary, the English language can feel limited. There are some things you've always noticed but never had a word to describe them. For example, petrichor is the smell of rain touching dry dirt. Before 1964, there was no word to describe it. You had to describe it as a phrase in a sentence, like "I don't like the smell of rain hitting dry dirt." Other words like sonder, liminal, and acrimony also belong in the same category. Each word describes something specific that no other word can. When a word fills that gap cleanly, people will keep using it.

Path 3: A cultural phenomenon. Another way a word can become “cool” is when it spreads like wildfire. There are several ways: a show, a song, a viral post, or a subculture. For example, the word ephemeral became popular because Snapchat created a product revolving around disappearing messages. Another example is the word liminal. It originally meant “in between,” from the Latin word for a doorway's threshold. When you say liminal, it means a space where you pass but don't stay, like a hallway or a stairwell or an empty airport at night. But around 2019, people started sharing photos of these places on social media and calling them unsettling, like something built for people but with no people in it. It doesn't feel right.

Then comes the holy grail. The rarest cool words check all three boxes: they can sound “cool,” fill a gap (describing something precise), and ride a cultural wave. One example that checks all the boxes is serendipity. Horace Walpole coined the word “serendipity” in 1754, borrowing from the word “Serendip” from the old tale called the “Three Princes of Serendip.” This word sounds like a spell. It describes a feeling no other word can: “stumbling into something good you weren't looking for.” Since then, dozens of languages have adopted it, including French (sérendipité), Spanish (serendipia), and Italian (serendipità), to name a few.

Cool words by origin

English can be described as a "collector's language," since it borrows words aggressively from every culture it touched, and the result is a lexicon of unusual depth and variety. So understanding where English words came from will help explain why so many of the most interesting words sound so foreign, formal, and surprisingly precise.

Greek gifted English its most scientific and philosophical vocabulary. Words like ephemeral (from the Greek word “ephēmeros,” or "lasting a day"), metamorphosis, labyrinth, and catastrophe are just some examples of the ancient Greek lexicon in modern English. Most Greek-inspired words cluster in medicine, science, and philosophy, which is why words like bioluminescence, psychology, and paradox all sound scholarly and intellectual. Estimates suggest that Greek contributes about 12% of English vocabulary, but its share of academic and technical terms could be much higher.

Latin accounts for roughly 29% of the English vocabulary, based on a popular survey of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Latin entered the English lexicon in several waves. Roman traders brought the earliest words like wine, street, and wall. Christianity (which arrived in 597 AD) brought popular words like altar, priest, and school. Later on, the Renaissance brought a fresh batch of Latin words into the English language, which scholars used to describe new scientific and philosophical concepts. These terms were added to the existing stock of Latin-inspired words that had come into the language via French after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Such words are now generally recognized as Latin-inspired rather than French. Examples include luminous, melancholy, sanguine, and tenuous. Formal and precise in sound and meaning, these are the sorts of words on which much academic and legal writing relies — the kind of vocabulary surfaced by the SAT vocabulary words tool.

The French lexicon is the language of government, culture, and the arts. Its greatest influence on English came after 1066, when the French-speaking Norman court brought its administrative and cultural vocabulary with it. Later, terms of art and culture from the 17th to 19th centuries were borrowed directly from Modern French, such as rendezvous, silhouette, tableau, and genre. Many of these French-influenced words have an air of sophistication. This is because, for three centuries or so after the Conquest, the language of government, etc., of the Norman ruling class was French, often used as a “prestige” language.

The Norse influence was older and quieter. Ordinary but essential words like sky, knife, window, husband, and ugly came from the Viking settlers in northern England. There are a few words of Norse that still exist in English, and many of them still have a strong, even dramatic sound. For example, the word skald referred to a Viking poet and one who read his own poetry. A berserker was a fierce Viking warrior who fought in a sort of frenzied rage.

As the language of the Vikings mixed with the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons, it is now known that on occasion both parties had the same ancient word but with different meanings. So, for example, the word for skirt comes into English through Norse as a bottom garment, and the word for shirt comes into the language from the same ancient source through the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons. The two words have since taken different paths in English, so we use skirt for clothing worn on the bottom of the body and shirt for clothing worn on the top.

Lastly, Japanese, Arabic, and Sanskrit contributed specialized vocabulary. Words like wabi-sabi, zenith, and karma. These words sound cool because they describe things or concepts for which English has no equivalent — more of this flavor shows up in the random weird words tool.

Cool words for writers

Every writer ultimately falls into this trap. They find a word that's perfect. It sounds rare, specific, exactly the right one to describe something, and they use it. Then they use it again and again. What started as precise writing becomes affectation, and readers start to feel the writer is showing off rather than communicating.

The rule for using “cool” words is the same one for using spices in cooking dishes. Using one or two can transform how something tastes. Adding too much can ruin the flavor. One well-chosen word like pellucid or incandescent can transform an otherwise plain paragraph into something that makes the reader pause and feel rewarded for reading the piece. However, a paragraph that adds every rare vocabulary word can create distance between writer and reader. The story becomes a showoff rather than a conversation.

Knowing the register of a piece of writing (how formal it is) is more important than knowing lots of words. A word's register is part of its meaning, so using melancholic instead of sad is okay in literary essays, but not in texts. Here's the bottom line: writers with a wide vocabulary are the ones who know which word belongs where.

The "show don't tell" principle can apply to vocabulary too, with some caveats. For example, using laconic instead of "a person of few words" can add flavor to a sentence rather than a flat phrase. But this will only work if the reader knows the word laconic. So when in doubt, a clear word beats a more impressive one.

A practical hack would be reading it out loud. How does the story sound with these words added? Does it stick out? If it sounds like you got it from a thesaurus, remove it. If it flows well with the message you want to convey, keep it. Your ear is usually a better judge than your eye when it comes to vocabulary in an article or story. If you want to build a solid vocabulary foundation, a good starting point is the SAT vocabulary words tool, which has a vast word database.

Cool words from science and nature

Some of the most beautiful words in the English language started as technical terms, then crawled into general use. That crawl, from specialist jargon to common language, is one of the most interesting processes in the history of any language.

The word ‘Ephemeral’ was once a term used by doctors to describe a short-lived fever which lasted for just one day. Today the word is more widely used to describe things that are short-lived. ‘Symbiosis’ is another word which originally came from the field of biology. It describes a relationship where two organisms live together. It is now widely used to describe relationships which are of a give-and-take nature. ‘Catalyst’ is a chemical term used to describe something which can help to speed up a chemical reaction. However, it is not used up in the process, and it has crossed over to describe how people change.

The word bioluminescence, meaning the light produced by living creatures such as fireflies and deep-sea fish, is precise and in some ways also magical. Another group of words derived from Latin is the names for types of astronomical objects: nebula (mist/cloud) once described any hazy patch in the sky and now refers to clouds of gas and dust in space between stars. The word for the dancing lights of the polar sky, Aurora, comes from the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn. It is the best name for these displays of natural light.

Most of the ‘random’ words I've chosen are nature-based, and each has a special meaning, often relating to a human experience we wouldn't have known to name before. For example, the smell of rain on dry ground is called petrichor, coined by two Australian scientists in 1964. Then there's apricity, the warmth of the sun in winter, dating back to 1623, and sillage, the scent trail we leave behind after walking through a space. You can find many more unusual words with the random weird words tool, should you ever need them.

Most of these new words seem to be rather immediate in their utility, i.e., they name a relatively slight, unnoticed experience or sensation. In general, language is slow to address our sensory experiences; the few words which do catch up with our experience will likely endure for some time.

How to actually remember new words

The biggest vocabulary mistake most of us make in remembering new words is passive exposure. This means we read an unfamiliar word, look up its definition on Google or in a dictionary, then move on, which creates an illusion of learning. Without “retrieval practice,” or actively recalling the word without looking it up, the new word you've learned will be forgotten within hours or days.

The most effective method for vocabulary retention is spaced repetition. This method involves reviewing a new word immediately after you have learned it, followed by a review a few moments later, and then reviewing at longer and longer intervals. The key to this method is repetition. Each time you successfully recall a word you have learned, the memory trace for that word is strengthened and the time before you have to review it again is extended. Flashcard apps like Anki implement this algorithmically, but you don't need an app for this. You could write the word or words you've just learned in a notebook, and review them at set intervals (e.g., on day two, day five, day twelve, and day thirty). Decrease the interval if you forget the word immediately.

Another important principle is context over isolation. That is, words learned in the midst of sentences are far more easily retained than those learned as mere definitions, singly isolated. Thus, when you read the word sanguine in a book — say, "He's sanguine about the outcome despite all the evidence against him" — you are not merely learning a definition of the word; you are also learning how that word was used in that particular circumstance. This makes it far more likely that you will actually remember the word. Then try using that word in a sentence on your own; this is the most effective method for burning it into your memory bank.

Short but repetitive daily sessions will compound faster than long intensive sessions spaced out further. For vocabulary building, 10 minutes a day is way more effective than 2 hours on a single weekend. Develop a word of the day routine, and use the word in at least one sentence before you go to bed each night. If you build that daily habit, you'll notice improvements that compound over a few short weeks.

Cool vs. aesthetic vs. beautiful words — what's the difference?

These three categories overlap but are not identical, and the distinction is worth making if you are looking for a specific type of word.

First up are the cool words: words that evoke some kind of recognition, whether that's amazement, a smile, or even a nod of approval. The words sonder, kerfuffle, ephemeral, and bioluminescence all count here. A word is cool because of how it's used in culture and how specific it is to the description or message it conveys.

Aesthetic words: These are words that sound pretty, which prompt the reader to an emotional response. They are often words of nature which describe scenes and events that inspire and move us. Aesthetic words are typically gentle, flowing words that evoke a feeling or sensation. The word “aesthetic” comes from the Greek word aisthētikos, meaning “perceived by the senses.”

Beautiful words offer further refinement — words that combine a beautiful sound with deeper meaning. Words like mellifluous (having a sound that is rich), gossamer (something extremely light or delicate), and petrichor (the pleasant, earthy smell that fills the air when rain falls on dry soil or rock after a warm, dry spell) tend to be longer, with liquid consonants and open vowels, that offer a precise description of things.

Using words to create an Instagram filter? Use aesthetic words. Need words for poetry or other literary work? Try beautiful words. Trying to enhance your writing, conversation with friends, and/or vocabulary in general? Then cool words are the best choice to help you.