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Have you ever stumbled into the fact that you use the same handful of quirky words over and over again: in writing, in emails, in phone conversations? Or perhaps you too have found yourself presenting to a group and suddenly, for no conscious reason, the same word keeps popping out of your mouth.  ‘Where did that come from? I never use the word ‘ragged’?

You might have noticed that some TV writers have favourite words which fall into the mouths of character after character. What are the most used words of some renowned authors?

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It’s a question that author Ben Blatt explores in his aptly titled book: Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve. What the Numbers Reveal about the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing. In his entertaining analysis, Blatt looks beyond singe word use. We see, for instance,  which authors are most mad about adverbs:

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Blatt explores which clichés famous authors use in more than half of their books, such as:

Famous Authors’ Favorite Clichés

Isaac Asimov: ‘past history’
Jane Austen: ‘with all my heart’
Enid Blyton: ‘in a trice’
Dan Brown: ‘full circle’
Tom Clancy: ‘by a whisker’
Suzanne Collins: ‘put two and two together’
William Faulkner: ‘sooner or later’
EL James: ‘words fail me’
George R. R. Martin: ‘black as pitch’
Vladimir Nabokov: ‘in a word’
J.K. Rowling: ‘dead of night’
Zadie Smith: ‘evil eye’
J.R.R. Tolkien: ‘nick of time’

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Then, we come to the favourite words.  Blatt calls them ‘cinnamon’ words in honour of Ray Bradbury who ‘uses the word cinnamon 4.5 times more often than the word is used in the Corpus of Historical American English.’

Blatt has strict rules for the assignation of cinnamon words. The word must: a) be in at least half of the author’s books, b) be used by the author at last once per 100,000 words throughout their books, c) not be so obscure that it is in the Corpus of Historical American English less than one per million words, and d) not be a proper noun.

So: what are some of the cinnamon words that Blatt unearthed across authors’ fictional works?

Authors’ Favoured Words

Isaac Asimov: galactic, terminus, councilman
Jane Austen: civility, fancying, imprudence
Charlotte Brontë: tradesman, gig, lineaments
Truman Capote: clutter, zoo, geranium
Agatha Christie: inquest, alibi, frightful
Suzanne Collins: tributes, tracker, victors
Joseph Conrad: immobility, poop, skylight
Charles Dickens: hearted, pinched, rejoined
William Faulkner: hollering, realized, immobile
Ian Fleming: lavatory, trouser, spangled
John Green: radar, prom, pee
Henry James: recognize, oddity, afresh

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C.S. Lewis: dwarfs, witch, lion
George R. R. Martin: dragons, cloaks, unsullied
Toni Morrison: messed, naval, slop
Vladimir Nabokov: mauve, banal, pun
George Orwell: beastly, quid, workhouse
J.K. Rowling: wand, wizard, potion
Lemony Snicket: siblings, orphan, squalor
Amy Tan: gourd, peanut, noodles
J.R.R. Tolkien: elves, goblins, wizards
Edith Wharton: nearness, daresay, compunction
Virginia Woolf: flushing, blotting, mantelpiece

For more cinnamon words and other interesting  book analyses, check out:

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www.justcurious.ca