Although my favorite word often changes with my mood and the day of the week, I would have to say that my all time favorite is amuck. I love to say, “Uh oh, He’s run amuck.” As a probation/parole officer I use it a lot! It is such an all purpose word: “The world is all amuck,” “Wow, She certainly is running amuck.” I guess it’s usually used with “run” and probably not with proper English, but it’s much more fun to say than, “He’s in trouble.” It just makes me smile to say it and it usually makes others smile too.
Sharon Nave
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Great word but it’s more interesting with it’s original spelling: amok. It’s one of a family of words (monk, crotch) where the O is pronounced as a U.
The word was made popular with Kipling’s work, and in his day was more about elephants going crazy than anything else…
Um, that’s not true, the O in “crotch” is pronounced like a long A, not a U. If it were pronounced like a U, that’d be a whole different word; crutch.
Joanna, that’s not necessarily true either. How you pronounce your vowels depends on where you come and what influenced your pronunciation of English growing up.
Amuck is not a word. Amok is the word you are after. Please study your dictionary!
The “o” in crotch is pronounced as the short o (same sounds as off and boss). A long a is the same as saying the letter A and a short u sounds as uhh (our thinking sound). Yeah, there are dialects and accents, but this is the agreed-upon pronunciation according to the OED.
This is wonderful writing! paula deen