Westfield, Disembowelment, Calpol and the 97 other scariest words this Halloween.

Mark Waites’ ten scariest words:

(c) New Yorker

Traction
Granular
Paradigm
Upstream
360
Longtail
Aspirational
Enabler
Monetize
Procurement

Mark Waites is Joint Creative Director and was a founding partner of the advertising agency Mother, which was voted by Campaign Magazine as the Agency of the Decade. When not in meetings, he Tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/Markwaites

Alex Preston’s ten scariest words:

The sign of widdershins

Eldritch
Unheimlich
Widdershins
Gytrash
Eidolon
Uncanny
Chthonic
Revenant
Wyrd
Nekyia

Alex Preston’s first novel, This Bleeding City, won the Spear’s and Edinburgh First Book Awards and was chosen as one of Waterstone’s New Voices 2010. GQ said of it: “Not since Bright Lights, Big City or Less Than Zero has a debut had such impact and captured the moment more succinctly.” His next book, The Revelations, will be published by Faber & Faber in February 2012. He tweets at @ahmpreston and his blog is alexhmpreston.com

Jason Gissing’s ten scariest words:

Your delivery is delayed.

Global warming
Big Oil
Bling
Stock market
Calpol
Tesco
Roadworks
Analyst
Oligarch
Westfield
In 2002 Jason Gissing and Tim Steiner revolutionised the concept of grocery shopping when they launched Ocado. They now make 20,000 deliveries across 70% of the country each day. He lives with his family in West London.

Arabella Preston’s ten scariest words:

Begin....End

Begin
Invert
Shadow
Time
Growth
Stiletto
Obstruct
Crowd
Maybe
Stop

Arabella Preston is a London-based Make-up Artist, Mum of two, and serial procrastinator. When she actually does finally get round to it, she eventually Tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/ArabellaPreston and blogs at http://alineonbeauty.blogspot.com/

Simon Spilsbury’s ten scariest words:

Simon Spilsbury is one of Britain’s leading illustrators and winner of AOI Images 2009, 2010, 201. He is published throughout Europe and the USA. He blogs at www.blog.spilsbury.co.uk

Sara Williams’ ten scariest words:
Gimp
Clone
Gorgon
Void
Apocalypse
Distopia
Horde
Disembowl
Sociopath
Highwayman 

Sara Williams is responsible for content strategy at Made by Many. She tweets at  http://twitter.com/#!/saradotdub and is also co-founder of Storywarp, a series of evenings dedicated to exploring the changing nature of storytelling (find out more http://twitter.com/#!/storywarp )
Charlotte Semler’s ten scariest words:

Website outage
Call Centre outage
Meeting
Photo shoot
Press day
Lab Dips
QC
Inflation
Postal Strike
Lost in Transit

Charlotte Semler co-founded Myla in 2000. In 2007 she launched the online women’s fashion and lifestyle brand Charlotte and Co http://www.charlotteandco.co.uk/  She Tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/charlotteandco

Matthew Stibbe’s ten scariest words:
Downsizing
Rightsizing
Restructuring
Reorganisation
Collateral Damage
Rendition
Synergy
Outplacement
Direct Action
Process 

Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine He is also the author of the blog about bad language called the Bad Language blog. He Tweets @ http://twitter.com/#!/mstibbe

Zsofia Demjen’s ten scariest words:
Insanity
Hallucination
Compulsion 
Anguish
Visceral
Deadline
Dead-end
Deadlock
Examination 
Procedure

Dr. Zsofia Demjen is my linguistics mentor. She is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her PhD thesis was “Language and Mind: How language can convey mental states, with special reference to Sylvia Plath’s journals.” She can be found at: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/zsofiademjen

James Mullinger’s ten scariest words:

7th row back, on the left. Why's he not laughing?

DEATH
CANCELLED
RIOT
HECKLED
CRUSHED
REPLACED
UNFUNNY
FAILURE
LOSER
FRAUD 

James Mullinger is a comedian. He has just finished a run of sold-out solo shows at The Roundhouse, from where he went on to die a death at Camden’s Highlight . His new series Movie Kingdom is on Saturdays, at 6pm on DMax (Sky 144). Until then, he’s all over Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/james.mullinger he Tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/jamesmullinger and looks suave on http://www.jamesmullinger.com/

All language is individual. Words heard, then incubated, weigh differently within each of us. Thank you to The Ten who had the unnerving or cathartic experience of supplying their scariest.
Sleep well tonight, everyone.
Chris

Chris West.