If someone says, “I loooove candied yams,” there is little doubt about how they feel.

The way the person drew out the word love by repeating the o has a name. It’s called an emphatic, elongated vowel. English speakers do it all the time.

I waaant yams. Heeeelp! He did it, I saaaaw him. It was a teeeerrible storm. The night was so daaaark. Pleeeease, sir, may I have some more? She’s sooooo cool. There is waaaaay too much icing on the cake. I neeeed to see that movie. The turnout for the party was huuuuuge.

(In singing, of course, vowels are often elongated for musical reasons. “Yesterdaaaay. All my troubles seemed so far awaaaay.” “The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round, aaaaall throuough the tooooown.”)

English is not the only language that uses emphatic, elongated vowels. I saw a Reddit entry where many bilingual people chimed in, giving examples in Spanish, Japanese, French, Swedish, and Russian, to name but a few.

A Reddit user called Florent1234 said this about French:

“French can lengthen pretty much any syllable in a word, even change stress patterns for different emotional values. . . . This is sometimes referred to as emotional stress, making French pretty versatile in that sense.”

Germans not only use emphatic, elongated vowels, they loooove (lieeeeebe) to glue separate words together to create new words. Want to call someone stupid in German? You might try Teletubbyzurückwinker. It means someone who would wave back to Teletubbies.

I don’t know about other languages, but in English it’s possible for someone to elongate a vowel, but mean the opposite of what they are saying. For example, someone could say, “I loooove candied yams,” but by wrinkling their nose and saying it in a sarcastic tone, convey that they, in fact, haaaate yams.

We can turn words into forceful expressions by accenting and elongating the first syllable. Take the word ridiculous. If you want to emphasize how ridiculous something is, you say “REEEE-DIC-yoo-lus.”

The REEEE could also have a slight dip to it. REEeeEE-DIC-yoo-lus.

Stupid? STUUuuUU-pid. Crazy? CRAAaaAA-zy. Ugly? UHuhUH-gly.

For a good time, use this technique on lesser-known words. Here are a few, just to give you the idea.

Pediculous. It rhymes, almost, with ridiculous and means lice-infested. To comment on how cheap and shabby a place is, you could say, “That motel was pediculous!” Or simply, with a note of disgust and a wrinkling of the nose, “PEHehEH-DIC-yoo-lus!”

Xanthodontous (zan-thuh-DAHN-tuhs). It sounds like a dinosaur, but it means having yellow teeth. It could be used to say that what comes out of a person’s mouth is tainted by their teeth. “She’s completely xanthodontous, if you know what I mean.” Or, “ZAAaaAAN-thuh-DAHN-tuhs!”

One I particularly like is coccydynia (cahx-suh-DIN-ee-uh). It’s a medical term for pain in the coccyx or tailbone. It is a great term for someone who is a pain in the you-know-what. “He is an extreme case of coccydynia.” Or, of course (with a shake of the head), CAHahAHx-suh-DIN-ee-uh!”

I apologize profusely for this column. It was UHuhUHn-necessary.