tasty words
1. To throw something (someone) out of a window is to defenestrate
. I love this word because it immediately brings some interesting
memories to the front, not to mention makes me think of some new things
to toss out of a window.
Lee Nachtigal, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA
2. Poodle-faker - a young man too much given to taking tea
with ladies.
Jane, Pembroke
3. Omphaloskepsis (self-absorbed, navel-gazing). I'm not
really a selfish person, but I do occasionally need someone to remind
me to look up from my navel. Plus, things that have to do with
belly-buttons are generally pretty fun.
Anise Brock, San Francisco, USA
4. Mallemaroking - the carousing of seamen in icebound
ships. A wonderfully useful word! How many icebound ships do we all
know?
Sue H, Tiverton
5. Spanghew - to cause (esp. a toad or frog) to fly into the
air off the end of a stick. (In northern and Scottish use.) Why? Well,
all one has to do is imagine the myriad situations in which one might
use this word.
Michael Everson, Ireland
6. Scrimshanker - one who accepts neither responsibility nor
work.
Maurice De Ville, Chesterfield
7. Zareba - a protective hedge around a village or camp,
particularly in the Sudan. Used to great effect by PG Wodehouse in, for
example, The Clicking Of Cuthbert, with his description of a Russian
novelist: "Vladimir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become almost
entirely concealed behind a dense zareba of hair."
Peter Skinner, Morpeth, UK
8. I first heard Stephen Fry (of course!) use this on QI. Tmesis
- To break one word with another. For example:
dis-bloomin-graceful, un-flippin-believable. Use it mainly when talking
to British Gas.
Colin Rogers, Maidenhead, Berks
9. I love the word quidnunc , which means one who
gossips because it is a word I could use to describe a lot of people
who fit the definition and they wouldn't know what I was saying.
Katie, Hickory Hills, IL, USA
10. Ischial callosities is a great description, because of
its precision. It refers to the leather-like pads on a monkey's bum.
Paul Edward Hughes, Langley, Canada
11. One of my favourite words is cryptomnesia because
it captures the meaning of a whole process that I previously never
thought could make it into a single meaningful word. Of course it makes
sense, and literally means "buried memory". I first came across it
reading Jung when he described the process of forgetting the source of
some information and assuming you've known it all along. That's such an
ephemeral process, and I'm fascinated by it as much as the word used to
describe it.
Alan Languirand, Ypsilanti MI, USA
12. One of my favourite words is urt . Urt is
almost onomatopoeic, since an urt is a "leftover bit".
Eric McConnachie, Clear Lake, Ontario, CANADA
13. I like the word termagant meaning a quarrelsome
shrew of a woman - because it's just obscure enough to get mixed up
with "ptarmigan", a lovely bird.
Jan, Portland, Oregon, USA
14. Oxter - space under the arm (not the armpit) eg he
walked down the street with a copy of the Times under his oxter.
David McLoughlin, Dublin, Ireland
15. Spelunking - the hobby or practice of exploring caves.
The word just sounds good, I love it!
Rachel, Reading
16. Petrichor - the sweet smell of rain on dry earth.
Although I wouldn't consider myself enough of a lexiphane (another good
word, meaning "one who uses words pretentiously") to bring it up in
every day conversation. Plus, living in Scotland, dry earth isn't a
phenomenon I'm used to.
Natalie, Glasgow
17. Frippet (noun) - A flighty young woman prone to showing
off. Could be used for the vast majority of contestants on Big Brother.
Charley, Bristol
18. Panglossian - Excessively or naively optimistic. The
world needs more people like this now than ever!
VJ Patel, Luton, UK
19. I love the word proprioception (go ahead and
look it up - I define it as knowing where you are in the world, where
your body stops and everything else begins). I learned it in an
undergraduate psychology course, probably. One of my favourite things
about this word is that I can never remember it! I'll come across a use
for it and then rack my brain for several minutes before having to give
up and then of course suddenly remembering it (there's another word I
have the same experience with but I can't remember what it is just
now). There's a French term that I believe is tangentially relevant to
proprioception - "jusqu'au bout". It means "to the end" but it was
explained to me (by a nice young French man, many years ago!) in the
context of "je t'aime jusqu'au bout", as in to love someone all the way
to the ends of their fingers and tips of their ears (etc!).
Marni Law, Brisbane, Australia
20. If you ever fly into the US, then one of the questions
you're asked on the entry form you have to fill in is "Have you ever
been convicted of moral turpitude ?" What a great word
turpitude is! I've never heard it anywhere else, but I can guess what
it means and that the required answer is "NO". Just the sound of it is
faintly dubious, once you've realised that it's not something you use
to clean your paint brushes with.
Stevie, Brighton
21. I like the word discombobulated . It has a
staccato, mechanical sound and conjures up an image of a robot
scrabbling to hold itself together when all its nuts and bolts suddenly
start to fall out. Which is just how one feels when discombobulated!
Sally Ratapu, Auckland, New Zealand
22. Floccinaucinihilipilification - this word was used by
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachhan 20 years ago while giving an interview.
I was struck by his choice of word and the meaning of it!
Sudip Mazumder, London
23. Pusillanimous (lacking in courage or strength of
purpose) just sounds funny and derisive and insulting.
David Benning, Davis, CA USA
24. Sepulchral - of or pertaining to the tomb. I just love
the way it sounds and the movements my mouth must make to say it. To be
sure, I rarely have the opportunity to use it, except during Halloween.
Gregory Strucaly, Apollo, PA, USA
25. I love the word sphygmomanometer , which is the
medical instrument used to measure blood pressure. Try saying it after
a drink or two.
Lucy, Cambridge, UK
26. Crepuscular , which means "of or like twilight".
Sarah, Bedford, UK
27. Sinecure - a position or office that requires little or
no work but provides a salary.
Stephen Lynn, Antrim
28. Word: kakistocracy . Definition: The government
of a state by the worst citizens. A very useful word!
Helen Collins, London, England
29. Chthonic : first encountered in Philip Pullman, then in
the BBC series Rome, meaning dead, underground, of the nether world.
Mike Crompton, Hayfield, High Peak
30. Runcible as used in Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the
Pussycat - given in Chambers Dictionary as meaning a pickle-fork but
used in our household as anything, especially cutlery, which is
slightly ill-matched or bent/crooked.
Kirsty Harrison, Binfield, Berkshire
31. I very much enjoy palimpsest because you would
never think that there was a word for something so specific as that: "A
parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been
effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another." Its
etymology is beautifully direct. From Ancient Greek "palin" meaning
"again" (as in palindrome) and "psen" which means "to rub smooth".
William Kraemer, London, UK
32. I like susurrus which means a soft murmuring or
rustling sound. Terry Pratchett used it to great effect in one of his
books, and I couldn't help hearing the sound of a gentle breeze on tree
leaves whenever I read it. Almost like magic.
Sarah, Woking
33. I just like the sound of the word tintinnabulation and
if you look it up in the OED, it simply describes a sound made by the
ringing of a bell. Imagine using such a word in everyday language.
Earl Okezie, Lokoja, Nigeria
34. Maieutic is one of my favourite obscure words. It means
pertaining to intellectual midwifery and describes as no other word
does a phenomenon that happens more often than you might think. It is
very rewarding when you can match the moment to the word.
Martin Ackland, London
35. Crenellate - to furnish a wall with crenels or
battlements, the rectangular "gaps" seen atop castle towers. For me,
this word conjures up images of seaside holidays and carefully
constructed sandcastles.
Simon Bonner, Liverpool, UK
36. Borborygmus - the rumbling sound that comes from an
empty stomach.
Rupam, Ashburn, VA USA
37. Fug . I love jazz and have always thought a cellar jazz
bar with a hazy atmosphere created through captivating music and hazy
smoke would be perfect if called "The Fug". However, the smoking ban
now prohibits any kind of fug. And "The Sanitary" just doesn't have the
right ring.
Julian Williams, Stourport-on-Severn
38. Metanoia - the act or process of changing one's mind or
way of life - is so beautiful.
Sa Smith
39. Estivate (the opposite of hibernate), because that is
what I do. With the onset of autumn, I am looking forward to awakening
from my summer torpor. The colder the day, the happier and more
energized I am.
DJ Leslie, Falls Church, Virginia, USA
40. Rodomontade is my favourite, meaning boastful. Difficult
to use in conversation though!
Kevin Murphy, Glasgow
41. Slubberdegullion is a favourite word of mine, meaning,
roughly ,a worthless person. Throw it in next time you're gossiping
about someone.
Bob Baker, Dunster, England
42. I like erythrismal , meaning "red by nature".
An example would be a fox or a robin's breast. However, I am a redhead,
so may be biased
Judith-Anne MacKenzie, London
43. Chatoyant is a word I learned from a poet/artist friend,
and I teach it, or use it, whenever possible, which is quite often. It
means something that glows from deep within, like a cat's eye (chat),
or star sapphires, or highly polished hard woods.
Roxann , Alexandria, MN, USA
44. I like enervating (to weaken physically)
because it sounds like it SHOULD mean the opposite to what it DOES
mean.
Bob, Edinburgh
45. Tatterdemalion - a person with tattered clothing or of
unkempt appearance. This word has, to my mind, a "bouncy" rhythm to it
and use it often. I know several people who could have this word
attributed to them...
Graham, Luton, England
46. Mellifluous - sweet, pleasant-sounding speech, words or
music - is a my favourite word, though I suppose it couldn't really be
classed as obscure. It's so beautifully onomatopoeic.
Maura Evans, Bradford
47. A word I recently learned and immediately liked, is ideation
. It's like you take a creative word and turn it into a verb, make
it creatING! Ideation means "the process of thought" or "the
conceptualization of a mental image".
Theresa, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
48. I used to love the word syzygy because, in the
Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, its definition (in the mathematical
sense) went something like: "A group of rational, integral functions,
which, when severally multiplied together, the sum of the products
vanishes identically."
Reggie Thomson, Cambridge, England
49. My favourite word is sesquipedalian . From the
Latin, sesquipedalis, meaning a foot-and-a-half, it means given to
using long words.
Chris Howard, Morden
...which is probably a fitting adjective for...
50. I'm disposed to immediately feel dyspathy with
a secretary like Shea, but after goving at his story for a
while, I begin to hansardize . There's no point in being philodoxical
just because an apparently mundane subject deeply happifies another.
I may stroke my natiform chin sceptically at Shea's cachinnations
, but if such things truly make him tripudiate , then who
am I to be the pejorist ?
Rob Stradling, Cardiff
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/
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