math is good for the soul - who'd have believed it

Now I know and you know that I am a bit odd. It's common knowledge. My unnatural love of words for instance. There's nothing I like more than wrapping my tongue round a multisyllabic word.

I'm teaching Maths today. It's reminding me of all the amazing words I learnt in maths courses in my youth at school and university. Correlation, Pythagorean, Exscriptible, Hypotenuse. I love them all. I may not always have understood what they meant (hence my modest mathematics grades) but I loved saying them. Circumference, Rhombus, Symmetrical, Diameter, Fibonacci, Horizontal.

I happened to mention this to my pupils and it seems some of them have favourite maths terms of their own. One girl came up with Equidistant, which I have to admit I have been saying repeatedly since, and an (anonymous) year 11 boy choose Approximation.

You all think I'm mad; but try it yourself. Say the following words out loud, emphasise every syllable - shout them out if you can. Equilateral, Decomposition, Complementary, Trapezoid, Supplementary, Reciprocal, Parallelogram, Quadrilateral, Vertices, Tetrahedron, Iscosceles.

Now don't try to tell me you don't feel even just a little bit better than you did before you read them - I won't believe you.