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If you want to see into the hearts and minds of a people, your chance came recently with the British.

Two thousand Brits each just weighed in with their favorite word in a poll conducted by a game maker. The 20 highest ranking favorites made their way into our hands. And we’re eager to share them with you, our loyal readers and listeners.

The number one popular favorite is beyond guessing. So we’ll keep you in suspense by starting from number 20 and working our way up to the favorite. You might regard this as peeling back the onion of the British psyche layer by layer.

Number 20 is appropriately, kiss, a term recalling for most of us affection, passion, even dreamy comfort. Just above it in popularity come freedom, bed, cosy, peace, lush, and lovely. Some might see a pattern emerging here. But that’s broken soon enough -or is it?- at number 13 where we find the word, wicked. Well, make of that what you will.

Number 12 shows a departure from the Anglo-Saxon with a Latinate adjective, and an odd choice in the 21st century, incandescent. Above its glare sits the thing many of us live for, the weekend. Fair enough.

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Next we enter the top ten with -are you ready- onomatopoeia, which in case you’ve forgotten, means a word that contains or suggests the sound it describes.

On the next rungs up we find cool, fabulous, squishy -where did that come from?- happy and excellent. But isn’t it a surprise to find the fourth ranking favorite word in the UK is a relatively recent Americanism, discombobulated. Could this be a hint of the famous British wackiness? Number three is of course, mum. And right above her the word, love.

Which brings us to number one, the word most favored by the largest number of Britons, a word that presumably reveals to some degree their inner identity, their common bond, their shared vision, perhaps a glimpse into the soul of that people. Some may even suggest that any favorite word reflects the character, or the self of a person. We’ll leave such speculation to psychologists.

The most prevailing favorite word in Britain has ancient roots and unknown origins. Michael Quinion does an interesting treatment of it over at World Wide Words. Some suggest it came from the Latin term “non compos”, others that it’s derived from the name of the man who questioned Jesus, Nicodemus, and still others that it began in a Dutch phrase, “nicht om poep”.

Whatever its origin, the word that echoes as the favorite in the land of Shakespeare and Milton, in the realm of Monty Python and Mr. Bean, the one word that the British today place at the top of their list appears to be none other than “nincompoop”.

What more can you say?

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