26 March 2011

pleasant and annoying

 
We need an adjective that means “simultaneously pleasant and annoying.”

I was planning to sleep until noon today but at 9 A.M. a bird perched in the boxthorn bushes outside my bedroom window and sang. Unusually liquid and loquacious was the song, full of vernal optimism and oblivious to the fragility of avian life.

“How utterly ___,” I exclaimed, lacking the necessary adjective.

3 comments:

dan said...

how about the Sona words:

jujai
jujayo

?

Dan said...

... reminds me of the Spanish adjective "empalagoso", which means:

too sweet: sweet at first, but with an unpleasantly sweet feeling after..

also a verb:

"empalagarse", as in:

"me empalague' con la torta que comi'"

"I (oversweetened myself?) with the cake I ate."

Anonymous said...

I desperately need such a word; I am confined to a bed in a 'Health Care Center', and using a diaper; being always on my back, there is the always present danger of skin breakdown due to unrelieved pressure, which tends to concentrate in certain spots. When I am cleaned, the stimulation of these spots by an aide rubbing them with a washcloth is at once painful and pleasurable, like scratching an itch, a feeling that is almost sexual (indeed it has caused me to theorize that the pleasure/pain physical stimuli are physically identical and only distinguished by the brain's interpretation in context); I have at times described it as "hurts so good", but a better linguistic device would be welcome.