Words: Our Vanishing Resource

I write to you now to raise awareness of an issue that is of the highest importance. Much has been made in the media of late about our planet’s vanishing resources — our dwindling fossil fuels, our loss of natural wilderness, the dying of languages — yet we face an even graver threat today, one that no one has yet acknowledged.

As cinema has become more popular and the marketplace of ideas has become more crowded, we have enjoyed a veritable glut of oh-so-punchy and clever one-word movie titles. There are more and more of them these days; perhaps one consequence of the rising global temperature is that screenwriters now lack the brainpower to come up with titles longer than a single word. But in light of the rapidly increasing popularity of these one-word titles, the time has come when we must finally ask ourselves...

What happens when the words run out?

What happens when there are no more cool or evocative words to use as titles? Will we turn to pedestrian words in desperation, and head out on a Friday night to movies called simply “Desk,” or “Laundry”? Or will screenwriters perhaps be forced to look within, and summon heretofore untapped reserves of creative strength to give us titles that once again...mean something?

A list of real English words which also happen to be titles of movies or TV shows:

addiction
affliction
alien
armored
atonement
babe
blade
blow
bolt
bones
bound
brick
buried
cars
casino
castle
clerks
click
closer
cocoon
contact
control
conviction
crash
cube
deliverance
devil
diner
dinosaur
dogma
doubt
dune
duplicity
election
elegy
elf
eraser
fallen
fame
faster
felon
frequency
frozen
fury
ghost
giant
gladiator
glee
glitter
glory
go
grease
greed
hair
heaven
heat
heist
hereafter
holes
hook
hop
house
inception
insomnia
instinct
kids
legion
leviathan
levity
limitless
lost
machete
made
magnolia
memento
milk
mimic
mirrors
monster
moon
mother
network
next
notorious
once
panic
platoon
powder
precious
prime
proof
push
quills
ransom
red
rendition
rope
salt
sanctum
saw
scoop
seven
shampoo
shine
sideways
signs
smoke
snatch
soldier
spawn
speed
sphere
stealth
sunrise
stone
taken
tangled
teeth
traffic
trapped
tremors
turbulence
twister
unbreakable
unfaithful
unstoppable
up
vacancy
venom
vertigo
virus
volcano
waitress
wanted
war
witness
wrecked

...and here's what you can add if you include titles with just the word “The” in front of them:

apartment
apostle
aviator
beach
birds
cell
circle
company
conversation
conformist
cousins
cove
damned
dead
deal
edge
entertainer
exorcist
eye
fighter
fly
fugitive
garden
general
gift
godfather
graduate
heiress
hill
hunted
hustler
informant
insider
jerk
kid
killing
leopard
letter
mask
matrix
men
mirror
mission
navigator
negotiator
others
patriot
phantom
pianist
piano
player
prestige
producers
reader
reaping
ring
rock
saint
score
scoundrel
search
shadow
shining
siege
spirit
strangers
switch
tempest
terminator
thing
train
verdict
women
wrestler

...

Meanwhile, here are some very cool words that as yet have not been used by any notable movies — screenwriters, it’s first come first serve!

diamond
relentless
incinerated
dagger
axiom
mongoose
cantaloupe
frugal
calliope
mustache
ergonomic
doubloon
phantasmagoria
extravaganza
whirlygig

And for what it’s worth, here are some of my true favorite titles of all time:

The Color Purple
The Silence of the Lambs
Lord of the Flies
Blue Velvet
Ghost World
Rain Man
The Spanish Prisoner
The Catcher in the Rye
Wag the Dog
The Princess and the Warrior
A Clockwork Orange

Books may be protected from their covers, but films are meant to be judged by their titles...