WORDS YOU DON’T KNOW
BY ROBIN BLOOR
Humorous Essays Involving: Rare words,
Swear Words, Wrong Words, Long Words,
Curse Words, Terse Words, Legal Words, Regal
Words, Tech Words, Sex Words,
Eponyms and Retronyms.
PRAISE FOR WORDS YOU DON’T KNOW
“Veni, vidi, legi,” ~ Julius Caesar
“The lyf so short, the booke so longe” ~ Geoffrey Chaucer
“What blatherskitery is this?” ~ William Shakespeare
“The Pobble who has no readers
Had once as many as me;
When they said “Some day you may lose them all;”
He replied “Fish, fiddle-de-dee!”
~ Edward Lear
“This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown away with great force.” ~ Dorothy Parker
“A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.” ~ Norton Juster
Disclaimer: As is the case with most “praise for” pages, there is no evidence that any of the above people read this book. Indeed, all but one are dead.
The Dedication
This book is dedicated to all those discerning and elozable individuals who have had the good taste to purchase it. They are the salt of the earth, the bedrock of society, the guardians of culture and an inspiration to their peers. But enough of this honeyfuggling. On with the book!
Published by
LITTLE CROW PRESS
Austin, Texas
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate Internet addresses in this work at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor author assumes any responsibility for errors or changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher and author have no control over and do not assume responsibility for third-party websites
or their content.
Copyright © 2009 by Robin J. P. Bloor
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a re- trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.
ISBN 978-0-9789791-1-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009935157
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
www.WordsYouDontKnow.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Fimblefambles
II. The First Ten Words You Don’t Know
III. Strange Words
IV. Short Words
V. Very Long Words
VI. Useful Words
VII. Words That Shouldn’t Exist
VIII. Words You Didn’t Know Were Eponyms
IX. Words Whose Etymology You Don’t Know
X. Collective Nouns You Don’t Know
XI. Units of Measure You Don’t Know
XII. IT Words You Don’t Know
XIII. Adventurous Words
XIV. Words I Predict You Don’t Know
XV. English
Words That Were Arabic Words
XVI. Words With Limericks
XVII. Nonsense Words You Don’t Know
XVIII. Words About Words
XIX. Dirty Words
XX. Swear Words and Curse Words
XXI. Insulting Words
XXII. Legal Words You Don’t Know
XXIII. The Last Word: Phonus Bolonus
Pronunciation Guide
Dictionary
Webliography
I
FIMBLEFAMBLES
“Every vice has its excuse ready.” ~ Publilius Syrus
We could call this part of the book the exordium or we could call it the prolegomenon. It would be a bit of a let down to call this anything as mundane as the preface, the introduction, the foreword or the prologue, because those words are all too familiar and this book purports to be about “words you don’t know.” I’m betting that you’ve never met with exordium and prolegomenon before. They have roughly the same meaning. They refer to a preliminary essay or set of words that haunt the beginning of a treatise or learned book.
I don’t think of this collection of verbose essays as something as grandiose as that, so I cannot regard this as a true exordium (or prolegomenon)—even though this is where the book starts. In reality, it’s nothing more than a set of excuses I’ve cooked up to cover the situation where you are caught reading this book by some impertinent individual who asks, “Why are you reading that book?”
Let me tell you a story. One day I wrote a posting for my blog (HaveMacWillBlog.com) with the title “10 Words You Don’t Know.” I have no idea why I wrote it. That day I decided I wanted to write something whimsical and I stumbled onto a list of rarely used words, so I wrote about some of them. The posting quickly became the most read item that I have ever written—with tens of thousands of readers visiting my web site to read it. I cannot explain why the posting was so popular and why so many people were attracted to read it. Similarly, I cannot know why you would want to read this book, but clearly you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading these words. Consequently, just in case you have no idea why you’re reading it either, I’m providing you with set excuses, which you can use to explain yourself if called upon to do so. So this is not an exordium at all. It’s a collection of fimblefambles. It’s a set of ten lying excuses for you to use if need to explain why you’re reading this book. I sincerely hope at least one or two are useful.
(By the way, these fimblefambles presume you’re not reading the digital copy of this book. If you are, you’ll just have to imagine you’re holding the paper version in your hot little hand.)
But let me pause just a moment to explain this “10” thing. Why is the number 10 so satisfying? Why is 5 excuses too few and 14 too many? You could chalk it up, I guess, to the fact most of us have 10 fingers. Perhaps David Letterman has conditioned us to expect all of life’s little perplexities to arrive in neatly ordered lists of 10. Maybe it was Bo Derek running down the beach in that carneous (flesh-colored) swimsuit—in slow motion no less—that branded the number 10 in our collective psyches. Whatever the reason, the number 10 seems to be hardwired into my brain, and probably yours, as a solid, pleasing quantity. Not too little and not too much; just right.
Now. On with the fimblefambles!
“I found it.”
This is a very credible excuse. People are always leaving or abandoning books at airports, on airplanes and on trains. Consequently other people are always picking them up, browsing through them, and maybe even reading them. As long as your copy of this book looks reasonably well thumbed you should get away with this fiction. You can then respond to your inquisitor—the one who dared to ask why you were reading this book—by saying “Gosh, have you any idea what the word fronglemenser means? It’s a person who tries to engage you in conversation when you’re much more interested in reading a book.”
“I know the author. Look it’s signed!”
To prove it, you can show them the front page of the book where I’ve printed a personal message to you and added a signature. And, I promise you, if anyone calls to ask whether I really signed the book, I’ll tell them that I did.
I was inspired to print that message and signature by a friend of mine, who, having written his first book, sent me a copy along with a sticker that had a printed message and his printed signature on it—so that I could stick it in the front of the book. “What a useful idea,” I thought to myself. Books are worth more if they are signed by the author, so maybe people will value this book more if I print my signature in the front along with a personal message.
“I’m learning English as a second language and this is recommended reading for the course.”
This is a whopper. Nobody in his right mind teaching English as a second language is going to recommend this book, unless they simply hate foreigners and want them all to go back from whence they came. If you really are learning English as a second language and your teacher gives you this book, change your course. Nevertheless this claim is credible.
The misleading title of the book almost hints at the idea that the words it contains are words you should know. Bear in mind that this excuse may require a little skill, as you may have to pretend that English is indeed your second language. If you don’t think you can carry that off, try a different fimblefamble.
“Oprah Winfrey recommended it.”
She didn’t. But it’s no secret that Oprah’s book recommendations are very powerful endorsements, so I’m slipping this fimblefamble in as a simple act of self-promotion. Just the rumor that Oprah may have been a little partial to this book will do me no harm whatsoever.
I’m hoping you’ll use this excuse much more than any of the others. After all, if Oprah had recommended this book, it’s probably worth reading, so let’s all assume she did.
“My spouse bought it for me.”
If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable that you’ve been caught reading this book, then this is the fimblefamble for you. Everyone knows that spouses buy each other lousy presents. It’s in the wedding vow somewhere.
Come out with this and your inquisitor will naturally feel a certain amount of sympathy. Then they’ll start to discuss the lousy present their spouse got them the last time their birthday came round, and you’ve successfully changed the subject.
“I’m trying to improve my vocabulary.”
Of course you’re not. But your inquisitor doesn’t know that and improving your vocabulary is often thought of as something worth doing. So it is a lie worth telling. Vocabularies should be big and everyone ought do whatever they can to augment them. Have you noticed how you never run into people who claim that they’re trying to decrease their vocabulary?
“I love the English language and I’m hoping to improve my knowledge of it.”
I hate to admit this, but if you read this book, you might actually improve your knowledge of English. It’s not written with that aim in mind, so don’t get your hopes up, but it may have a little impact in that direction. Writing it certainly improved my knowledge of English, but (and I’m not lying here) it improved my knowledge of Greek much more. But you can hardly use “I’m trying to improve my knowledge of Greek” as a credible excuse for reading this book. No one’s gonna buy that.
“I wanted to find out more about the origin of words.”
In which case you should have bought an etymological dictionary. Actually this book will provide a little data, here and there, about the origin of some words, but it isn’t organized and it won’t develop your knowledge much.
You will discover though, possibly to your complete surprise, that English is a whoring slut of a language, happy to consort with just about any other language it meets. Our beloved English can be forgiven for inheriting words from Greek, Latin, German and French, but Swedish, Polish, Serbo-Croat, Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Urdu, Aborigine, Chinese, Japanese, American Indian languages? Does the lady have no shame?
It’s not her fault. The simple fact is that English verbs don’t conjugate much. The nouns have no gender and there’s no declension. The adjectives normally don’t have to agree with the nouns in any way. There are almost no rules of spelling and the rule for creating a plural (add an ‘s’) works for almost any foreign word. If any of the very few rules of English get in the way, it’s okay to break them. Put that all together and there’s almost no way to prevent new words getting into the language from elsewhere. All that has to happen is people have to start using them.
“I wonder just how many of these words I know.”
Face it; you don’t know any of them. And if you do, then “you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” You won’t run into many of these words even if you consume the complete works of William Shakespeare and read the New York Times cover to cover every day for a year.
Not that it matters. This is a fimblefamble after all, and it’s a good one if you can carry it off. Pretend you’re an English Professor from an obscure university in Australia and read out the word omoplatoscopy. “Ah yes, I seem to remember that John Harvey Higgins wrote a dissertation on the influence of omoplatoscopy in early Chinese society.”
“I bought it for the bookshelf.”
This is the fimblefamble par excellence for this book. “I just wanted to see its spine on my bookshelf next to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.”
Unless they have actually read this book, everyone is going to think that it is some serious learned tome and what better to do with a learned tome that flip through it so you have some idea of what it contains and then consign it to the bookshelf forever to gather dust.
I heartily recommend this fimblefamble.
II
THE FIRST TEN WORDS YOU
DON’T KNOW
“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” ~ Ralph W. Sockman
This collection is the one that I created on a whim and which attracted so much attention. Its lure probably came from the challenge “Words You Don’t Know”. Some readers of this section will surely know one or two of these words, because that’s just the way of the world. But most of you will not know any of them and, to be honest, you will not find them hard to forget. I’ve forgotten most of them already. Here’s the pioneering list of 10, randomly selected from a much longer list I keep of obscure and strange words:
Anopisthography
This refers to the practice of writing on just one side of the paper. When I have a notebook that opens left-to-right, I’m not an anopisthographist, but when the pages are bound at the top, I convert to anopisthography immediately. I’ll bet most of you are the same. I’ll also bet that all of you suffer from Post-It® anopisthography. Only a curmudgeonly pinchpenny would fail to do so.
Quomodocunquize
Quomodocunquize is a word for recessionary times. I’m hoping it will see much greater usage now that so many of us are impecunious. It means to make money by any possible means. Naturally that includes both immoral and amoral means, but could also include ingenious means, such as making money from doing nothing more than writing about unusual words.
Jentacular
What could be more jentacular than the smell of bacon and eggs cooking on the stove and the rustle of cornflakes as you pour them into the bowl? The answer is nothing, really, as long as you live in America or the United Kingdom. However, if you live in Scandinavia, such things are not jentacular at all—although the sight of sliced cheeses and cold meats on a plate certainly are. Jentacular means relating to breakfast.
Pigmentocracy
From the presidential perspective, 2008 saw the end of pigmentocracy in America, pigmentocracy being government by those of one skin color. To no one’s surprise, pigmentocracy tends to be the rule in most countries. The United States is now one of the few exceptions.
Squaliform
Squaliform means shaped like a shark. It’s the kind of word you don’t get to use very often, even if you know it. All sharks are, by definition, Squaliform. But not many other denizens of the deep are similarly shaped. Also, should you actually be snorkeling in shark-infested waters and see the clichéd shark fin sticking out of a wave, you’re more likely to explete the unanticipated presence of the shark than to announce calmly, “Why, I believe there’s something squaliform coming this way.”
Quickhatch
A quickhatch is not what it sounds like—to me at any rate—that is, a chick emerging prematurely from its egg. It’s something else entirely. Hugh Jackman portrays a human quickhatch in the X-Men movies, with the latest movie in the series being very specifically about Hugh Jackman’s acquisition of his quickhatchness. A quickhatch is a wolverine. Apparently, it derives from the American Indian—probably Cree—word kwiihkwahaacheew. Sounds like a sneeze to me. Think about the movie poster we could have had if this word had stayed in its original language …
Gossypiboma
I love really, really specialized words and gossypiboma is a great exemplar. A gossypiboma is a surgical sponge accidentally left inside a patient’s body. It’s a surprising fact that patients occasionally leave the operating theater with a little souvenir from the surgical team.
Statistics suggest that these oversights occur about 30 times per week in the U.S. and a couple of times a week in the U.K.—the disparity in frequency being attributable to the fact that Americans undergo vastly more operations per person than the British. Things left behind include swabs, clips, screws and surgical implements. Only the first on this list is actually a gossypiboma – the rest don’t warrant a word of their own.
Noxal
When people discover, to their dismay, that they are the proud owner of a gossypiboma, they are likely to regard it as a noxal distinction. As a word, noxal has, on occasion, been used to mean noxious, but the correct meaning of this adjective is a little more specialized than that: pertaining to damage or wrongful injury from an object (or possibly an animal) belonging to someone else.
Hypothecary
I’m sure you’re well aware what an apothecary is. It’s an alternative word for pharmacist. A hypothecary, however, is not a hyperactive pharmacist. It’s much more topical than that. A hypothecary is a mortgagee—someone who loans money to house buyers. Under normal circumstances, hypothecaries simply make a living by gathering interest payments on the mortgage.
In recent times, hypothecaries bundled up tranches (i.e., slices) of property loans into derivatives and sold them to banks all over the world. This created an unsustainable financial bubble. The bursting of the bubble gave rise to a stock market crash and a huge increase in unemployment. This left many people with little option but to quomodocunquize.
Xenobombulation
I’ve got a work to do right now, and I really should get on with it, but I’m xenobombulating again. Xenobombulation is the act of avoiding one’s duties, malingering, even feigning illness or pulling some stunt like writing a blog post when you really should be getting on with real work.
III
STRANGE WORDS
“We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
~ Booker T. Washington
This book could and should be popular among epeolatrists. Dammit! It was written with epeolatrists in mind. An epeolatrist is, literally, one who worships words, but if we’re to be precise with the definition, worship is a bit of a stretch. We’re really talking about those who like to expand or test their vocabulary. If you are such a one, then you might like to chew on these 10 words:
Deipnosophy
Last night was definitely a night of deipnosophy, although at points, I’m sad to say, the conversation descended to the realm of political correctness. Americans are, in my experience, more prone to “politically correct” word deployment than the British.
This is something I have learned first hand, being a Brit in America in a household of Americans. So, last night at dinner, as I observed (to myself) my dinner companions picking their way through a minefield words for the umpteenth time, I speculated (to myself) whether it would be correct to say that they live in an epeocratic world—that they are ruled by words. But not being sure whether epeocratic is a word, I never mentioned it.
My instinct was correct; it’s not a word. However deipnosophy is. Deipnosophy is educated banter or, more accurately, learned dinner conversation, since deipnon is Greek for dinner. Last night, the deipnosophy was taken down a notch by rampant political correctness.
Lethologica
My shameful failure to think of a word that specifically means being ruled by words may have been just another example of lethologica—or it may not.
There may not be a single word that precisely means being ruled by words, even though, for example, there is a anemocracy, which means government by whim and there’s beerocracy, which is government by brewers and there’s even harlotocracy, which means government by ladies of the night. Lethologica, as I’m sure you’ve realized, is a condition characterized by an inability to find the right word for something.
Thymogenic
The word thymogenic emerged in the conversation last night. Almost all American television programs, especially those in prime time, culminate in what I call “The American Moment”—the inevitable, frequently teary, occasionally self-aware, but always sentimental denouement in which hero, heroine and a gaggle of minor actors come together and valiantly resist the urge to dissolve into a group hug. The American Moment is fundamentally thymogenic, the result of thymogenesis.
You might know this word and its forms if you study alternative medicine. The thymus is regarded by some as the center of emotions within the endocrine system. There’s even a chakra located there or thereabouts. Thymogenic means generated by emotion.
I can give you another example. This is a slightly different kind of American Moment: when one talks about Darwinism and evolution in America, the discussion is almost always thymogenic.
Umami
Apparently, the tongue is capable of detecting five distinct classes of taste: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami—although at the Mexican restaurant last night, I suspect that a sixth taste made a guest appearance, i.e., severe jalapeno, a taste situated somewhere between piquant and the fires of hell. Umami is the taste of meat. And it’s a Japanese idea. For most of us, umami is a pleasant, complex taste sensation, a fact that caused me to ponder out loud at dinner whether the animals we eat took a clever Darwinian decision when they chose to be domesticated, if they did.
Fortuitism
Did cows Darwinistically evolve with umami in mind? Did they improve the taste of their flesh so that we would farm them, thus severely diminishing their life expectancy but rapidly increasing their populaiton? This formulation creates an entertaining paradox since all the fauna we farm (pigs, cows, sheep, chicken, etc.) exist in much greater populations than they ever would if we were all vegans.
I’ve always had a bad feeling about Darwinism. I acquired it watching nature programs, where the commentator would proclaim that some angelfish or other developed its glorious coloring so that it could attract mates. A few moments later some sandy colored bottom-feeder would be congratulated for its stunning camouflage, which kept it safe from predators (and rapacious angelfish as well, I shouldn’t wonder.)
Darwinism is tautological. I prefer the concept of fortuitism: evolution by nothing more than chance variation.
Hylozoist
I’m also a hylozoist—someone who suspects that all matter is endowed with life. Of course, I don’t pursue this to the insane conclusion that, for example, my stapler is alive, although it does seems to have a mind of its own at times. I’m more struck by the fact that when you study the inner doctrines of the more respectable religions, the discussions of the origin of the universe are remarkably similar and equally paradoxical, no matter whether you insert God into the equation or remove him/her/it entirely. Hylozoists tend towards the “God conclusion.” If the universe is endowed with life then…
Cladogenesis
What I’m saying here is that science and religion appear to be cladogenetic in their theories of creation. They are historically cladogenetic anyway. Cladogenesis is evolution by means of branching off from a common ancestor and I’m using the term metaphorically.
Tetrapyloctomy
Okay, I admit that you can argue (as happened last night) that the scientific method and religion have little in common intellectually, but I personally think that’s just tetrapyloctomy. For example, Isaac Newton, the father of physics, used the scientific method and, while he was no theologian, he spent a good deal of his later life studying the Torah. He was neither atheist nor agnostic. Tetrapyloctomy? That would be the splitting of hairs four ways.
Ultracrepidate
Of course, we are all prone to ultracrepidation, and to be honest when someone starts to propose “intelligent design” as the genesis of life on this planet, I’m wont to ultracrepidate with the best of them (i.e., to criticize beyond my sphere of knowledge). The problem I have with intelligent design is that it’s not really a theory, because it defines no mechanism for evolution. However, that doesn’t mean that there is no such god-given mechanism.
Astraphobia
Some people of the religious persuasion with whom I have discussed intelligent design may have hoped that I would be struck down by lightning—especially when I resort to sarcasm. Maybe they’ve even prayed for it. If so they’ve prayed to the wrong god. Thor (of the Norse pantheon) and Zeus (of the Greek pantheon) are the ones to be beseeched in that regard. In any event, I’m not astrophobic. Them thunderbolts don’t scare me.
IV
SHORT WORDS
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I didn’t feel yare by any means. In fact, I felt as though I was in a kef as I strolled through the wen. I turned down a ginnel towards the suq, accidentally kicking a tot and uttering a gar. I disturbed a mewing cat. It mowed, but never moved. Lief I began to wonder whether the suq would be zoic. I was hoping to snup a dah from Ali the sutler.
Complete gibberish, right? But all the words are real and all of the unfamiliar ones are short. If you play Scrabble® a good deal, you may know all of these words and even their meanings. But everyone else should be at sea, so let’s unravel the paragraph above, word by word.
Yare
I’m not sure why this word isn’t used a good bit more. It means nimble, alert, prepared. When I hear a sound in the night and I get up to find out what it is, I’m either yare or frightened out of my skin, depending. So, “I didn’t feel yare by any means.”
Kef
The word kef refers to a dreamy state, possibly drug induced. It is quite the opposite of yare. So, “I didn’t feel yare by any means, in fact I felt as though I was in a kef.”
Wen (and Ginnel and Suq)
A wen can be any of the following four: a sebacious cyst, a spongy headgrowth that some goldfish have, a character from the Old English alphabet derived from a rune, and a highly congested city. I think we’ll go with highly congested city here.
Ginnel. This is a word I heard time and again in Liverpool, but I’ve not heard it elsewhere. So you may know it. It means alleyway.
Suq. You may also be familiar with this word. I know it as souk, which is a Middle Eastern market. Suqs are not like normal markets; you bargain for things before you buy them. It’s the way it works. They always ask outrageous prices if you aren’t prepared to bargain. The correct bargaining strategy is to feign interest. The first thing you show interest in should not be the thing you want.
Tot
This has multiple meanings, too, most of which you will know. A tot is a small child or a tot is a small amount (of rum, perhaps). You can also use tot as a verb, meaning to add something up. Here it means none of those. The word tot in our paragraph means a bone or some other object one might retrieve from a pile of garbage. (I resent it if you think I would actually kick a small child—or a small amount of rum, for that matter.)
Gar
“Shiver me timbers” is a gar. Having one’s timbers shiver, by the way, is what happens at sea in wooden ships when the weather is bad and the ships take a battering. It’s the old sea dog equivalent of “cross my heart and hope to die”—a mild oath or curse. So “I turned down a ginnel towards the suq, accidentally kicking a tot and uttering a gar.”
Mow (and Mew)
The word mew doesn’t just describe the noise a cat can make; it can also mean moulting. Thus a mewing cat may not be making a sound, as in this instance.
To mow is to grimace, when you’re not cutting grass. “I disturbed a mewing cat. Lief it mowed, but never moved.”
Lief (and Zoic)
Lief means both soon and gladly. In our opening paragraph it means soon. Zoic. You might just know this one, or be able to work it out. Literally, it means containing evidence of life.
“Lief I began to wonder whether the suq would be zoic.”
Snup
A suq is a good place to snup. To snup is to buy something of value, which some less discerning person has discarded or sold cheap. I once came across an antiques dealer who had had a painting—a Constable, no less—snupped from him. The worst part of it was that the newspapers and the national news got wind of this event so everyone knew he’d been snupped.
Dah
A dah is a short heavy Burmese knife, often with an ornate ivory handle. It’s conceivable that you could find one in a suq.
Sutler
And a sutler is the right kind of person to get a dah from. Believe it or not, a sutler is a camp follower, one who hangs around the army to sell provisions to the soldiers. So, I was hoping to snup a dah from Ali the sutler.
V
VERY LONG WORDS
“I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.”
~ Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
In choosing to provide a list of long words that you (or at least most of you) don’t know, I decided to eschew two very specific words—antidisestablishmentarianism and floccinaucinihilipilification—my presumption being that you will have run into both of them. When I was at school, I was unreliably informed that the longest English word was the first of these two, and later, when I went to university, I was unreliably corrected when told that the longest English word was in fact the second of these two.
Antidisestablishmentarianism has 28 letters and can be blamed on the marital difficulties of Henry VIII, who, when forbidden to get a divorce by Pope Clement VII, set himself up as “Pope of the English Church,” thus inconveniently linking the English church directly to the state. By the 19th century, some British politicians had begun to conclude that this linkage was a bad idea (suffering perhaps from America envy) and they became known as disestablishmentarians. Naturally, other politicians opposed this and thus talked-the-talk as antidisestablishmentarians.
Floccinaucinihilipilification noses ahead of antidisestablishmentarianism by a single letter and it is a lot easier to define. It means the categorizing of something as worthless trivia. For example, my definition of antidisestablishmentarianism could, and probably should, be floccinaucinihilipilificated.
The movie, “Mary Poppins,” put both of these words into the shade with the song titled, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” which is a word of 34 letters. Technically this is a nonsense word, but if you believe the words of the song, this is a word that is properly used only if you can’t think of anything to say. Thus, it is always used improperly, since, if you can’t think of some thing to say and you think to use this word, then you can think of something to say and, hence, shouldn’t say it.
Pseudoantidisestablishmentarianism
Let’s face it; this word is just a cheat. Technically, of course, it means a feigned opposition to the separation of the state from the Church, and at 34 letters it draws level with the Mary Poppins nonsense. But, if we’re going to play fast and loose with the prefixes, why not pseudofloccinaucinihilipilification—feigning to categorize something as worthless trivia? Or pseudosupercalifragilisticexpialidocious—a word you say when you actually can think of something to say, but want to give the impression that you can’t think of something to say?
Hippopotomonstrosesquippediliophobia
This word is blatantly intimidating and was almost certainly invented by a sadistic psychiatrist. At 36 letters, it’s longer than any of the words mentioned above and it means (I almost can’t believe it) the fear of long words. Only a sadistic psychiatrist would concoct such a word to describe the fear of such long words. I mean, how is that preferable to longwordophobia?
Circumbilivagination
I knew I would have to include some relatively short words, and at 20 letters this one is somewhat hippopotomonstrosesquippediliophobically challenged. Circumbilivagination means to move in a circle or walk around. There is a plethora of words that have the same or a similar meaning like; to circle, to orbit, to wheel, to whirl, to circuit, to rotate, to revolve, to circumambulate, to circumgyrate and to circumnavigate. That’s why circumbilivagination rarely comes up in conversation.
Honorificabilitudinitatibus
This is a Shakespearean contribution, in the sense that Shakespeare is purported to have spoiled some perfectly good paper with this word. It means the state of being able to achieve honors. Presumably just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps was honorificabilitudinitatibic. To be honest, I’m not sure whether Shakespeare used this word in a play, a sonnet, or a blog posting.
Cholangiocholecystocholedochectomy
I have my doubts that this word qualifies as a genuine long word. It has 34 letters and it refers to a medical procedure that involves cutting out the hepatic duct, the common bile duct, and the gall bladder. I really don’t believe this word ever gets used in conversations with surgeons. I say that because my uncle was a heart surgeon and I never heard him use it.
Having now listed 5 words, I think it’s time to state some of the principles I’m applying here. I really do believe that some words can’t be counted as long words if they are too specialized, so the last one doesn’t really count. I mean, I could have thrown in pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters, which is a coal-mining disease of the lungs) but that doesn’t meet the standard. There are probably shed-loads of chemical names that stretch “to infinity and beyond” that would vote themselves onto this list if I let them.
I’m also excluding place names and their derivatives (Liverpudlian, Mancunian, etc.), but I may as well mention, en passant, that Chargoggagoggmanchaugga-goggchaubunagungamaugg is the longest U.S. place name. It has been attached to a lake in Webster, Maine. The name is a Nipmuk (American Indian) word and denotes a local agreement between the Nipmuks and neighboring tribes—the Narraganssett, Pequot and Mohegan. It means, “You fish on the left side; I’ll fish on the right side; no one fishes in the middle.” Presumably, an ancestor of Dr. Henry Kissinger brokered that agreement.
I’ve traveled much of North Wales and I never once encountered a whirlpool or a red cave for that matter. However, I suppose I might have if only I’d visited the village with the U.K.’s longest name: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It means, “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the Red Cave.”
Proceeding on:
Entredentolignumologist
This is one of those words where you feel you just might be able to work the meaning out. But you can’t and you won’t. It refers to a person who collects toothpick boxes. The remarkable thing here is that, search as I might, I can’t find a word for someone who collects toothpicks and yet there’s a word for someone who collects the boxes they come in?
Aichmorhabdophobia (and Bathysiderodromophobia)
The first of these words presents a similar conundrum to entredentolignumologist. Aichmorhabdo-phobia refers to the fear of being beaten with a pointed stick. However, there is no corresponding word for the fear of being beaten with a blunt stick, or a thin stick or any other kind of stick. It’s a word with no relatives—a kind of orphaned stick phobia.
Inventing new phobias is a good way to concoct new long words and when I came across bathysiderodromophobia, which is an overlong word for the fear of subways, it occurred to me to cross-breed this with aichmorhabdophobia, to give aichmorhabdobathysiderodromophobia. I could then pretend that this was the fear of being beaten with a pointed stick in a subway. That would have been an impressive 34 letters, but hippopotomonstrosesquippediliophobia would still be longer, so I resisted the temptation.
Gynotikolobomassophile
This describes someone who likes to nibble on a woman’s earlobe. I guess it’s a stage that all us men have to go through a few years after our voices break. There is no equivalent word to describe someone who likes to nibble on the male earlobe, which seems an oversight because I personally know someone who does.
Aequeosalinocalcalinosetaceoaluminosocupreovitriolic
And if you’ve visited Bath, then you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s an accurate description of the spa waters at Bath and clocks in at a whopping 52 letters. The word, coined by Edward Strother (1635-1737), to describe the spa waters at Bath, and visitors to that wonderful spa town frequently use it. “Darling, shall we take the waters this morning.” “Oh, yes dear, they’re so aequeosalinocalcalinosetaceoaluminosocupreovitriolic.” This word, incidentally, may qualify as the longest in the English language.
Or it may not.
If supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, concocted by P. L. Travers, qualifies for the long word contest, then surely words concocted by Aristophanes qualify, too. In which case; lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrim-hypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon, with 189 letters, wins the contest. It would also be a good word to use as a tie-breaker in a spelling bee.
This gargantuan word means: a ghoulash composed of all the leftovers from the meals of the last two weeks.
Admittedly this is very, very long for a word, but actually, it’s reasonably concise as a recipe.
VI
USEFUL WORDS
“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.” ~ Evelyn Waugh
Just as there are some words that don’t serve any useful purpose, there are some words that you’ve probably never run into that are really useful or at least it feels quite satisfying that such a word exists, because you can see the need for it. The following is a list of words that I am, definitely, in favor of. I hope you will use them whenever the occasion arises.
Loganamnosis
We particularly advocate the frequent use of this word, since we suffer from this condition ourselves and we’re pretty sure that many people suffer in the same way. Loganamnosis occurs when we’re talking about something and, well, we just can’t pluck the right word out of our memory. Loganamnosis doesn’t actually mean not being able to remember a word. It refers to the obsession we develop which has us focusing on trying to remember the damn word we couldn’t quite retrieve and stops us from giving our attention to the conversation.
We may even blather on after the fashion of “What was that word? It begins with an o. Or maybe a u.” We’re even likely to burst into the conversation a few minutes later and say, “That’s the word! Loganamnosis!” And just in case loganamnosis really does cause loganamnosis in us, there’s an easier word to remember that means something similar: Onomatomania is our extreme vexation of having difficulty finding the right word.
Nosism
You may have noticed that the description of loganamnosis read a little oddly. That’s because it was carried out in the first person plural. I was practicing nosism. Only a nosist would write in that way, because nosism is the practice of referring to oneself as “we.” This is something for which Queen Victoria became famous when she declared, “We are not amused,” instead of using the more familiar, “Curl up and die, you little toad.” There is something quite pompous about the use of the first person plural in this way, since it presumes agreement by everyone present. A word closely related to nosism is wegotism. The meaning is slightly different since wegotism refers to the excessive use of ‘we’ in writing (but not in speech). We can thus proclaim that our description of loganamnosis was both wegotistical as well as nosistical.
Culacino
My eyes lit up when I encountered this word, partly because I’m utterly useless with coasters. When I want to put a drink down on a surface, nothing in me says, “You must get a coaster to put it on.” When I’ve put an inconvenient stain on a table surface I think, “Why can’t they invent surfaces that don’t stain?” But if it weren’t for people like me, there would be no need for the word culacino. A culacino (probably pronounce culachino, because of its Italian origin) is the mark left on a table by a moist glass, put there by some inconsiderate, lazy so-and-so who couldn’t be bothered to use a coaster.
Lubberland
When I die I hope to go to Lubberland, where I will surely meet other people who left plenty of culacinos on their tables and furniture. But in Lubberland, the culacinos never form on the furniture, the dishes never pile up in the sink, and the garbage puts itself out to be collected. Lubberland is a place inhabited by the kind of people who work at the desk next to you, but who send you emails because they can’t be bothered to stand up and engage you in conversation. Its inhabitants are those who would spend hours driving around parking lots looking for a space close to the shop they want to visit, because walking will surely exhaust them. But in Lubberland there’s always a parking space waiting for you. Lubberlanders have remote controls for their remote controls and if they lose the remote for the remote, no worries! They have a remote for the remote for the remote. In short, Lubberland is a mythical paradise reserved for those who are lazier than a pillow tester and mean to remain so. Lubberland! Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and effort has vanished away.
Grinogog
Should I die and find myself in Lubberland, I would soon be grinning like the cat’s uncle. I would undoubtedly become a grinagog, a person who is perpetually grinning. Grinagog is, to my mind, a wonderful word, because it is almost onamatapoeic and much better than grizzledemundy, which means exactly the same but fails to telegraph the meaning.
Eccedentesiast
I would not become an eccedentesiast, the eccedentesiast being the opposite of a grinagog. The grinagog may be a bit of a simpleton, but he is smiling because he (or she) is somehow amused or happy. The eccedentesiast is the one faking the smile. The word was actually coined by Florence King, the so-called “Queen of Mean,” who penned a column called “The Misanthrope’s Corner” in the U.S. magazine, National Review. She was particularly referring to those who brandish fake smiles for the television camera, which means quiz show hosts and politicians, in my experience.
Macrologist
Of course, if you run into a macrologist, it’s possible that you will become an eccedentesiast for the sake of politeness. A macrologist is a boring conversationalist, the kind of person who, as Henry Ford once said, “opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.” This is an odd word which seems as inappropriate to its meaning as grinagog is appropriate. The origin of the word is from the Greek macrologia, which simply means a long discourse (a lot of words) with no specific implication of boredom. However, bores and long discourses are often intimate friends. The worst thing about a bore is not so much that they won’t stop talking, but that they won’t let you stop listening. They provoke you into drinking quickly so that you can escape from them in order to refill your glass. After all, you can only play the eccedentesiast for so long. As George Eliot said, “Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, refrains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.”
Vilipend
Thomas Aldrich noted that, “The man who suspects his own tediousness has yet to be born,” and yet, we have no difficulty recognizing tediousness in others and vilipending them for it. Champion bores are often vilipended, as for example one putative bore was by Herbert Tree, who commented “He is an old bore; even the grave yawns for him.” To vilipend is to disparage or belittle others. Vilipending is an art unto itself with many practitioners, but few artists. Former U.K. Labour Minister, Denis Healey, ranks among the great vilipenders for his comment about Parliamentary opponent, Sir Geoffrey Howe. Healey remarked that, “Being attacked by Sir Geoffrey is like being mauled by a dead sheep.” Mamie Van Doren crucified Warren Beatty’s ego with the words, “He’s the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.” She thus achieved in a single sentence what Carly Simon took a whole song (You’re So Vain) to accomplish. Johnny Mercer, though, is the ‘victor vilipendorum’ for his comment about a British West End musical: “I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics.”
Garbist
Vilipending might be great fun if you happen to have a lively wit and a sharp tongue, but it can be a dangerous pursuit. As Richard Steele observed, “Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty, without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.” A garbist is, if nothing else, modest. The word refers to someone who is adept at engaging in polite behavior. The word seems to be a little schizophrenic because on the one hand there is garbage, which derives from the Old French word jarbage, meaning a bundle of sheaves or entrails. On the other hand there is the word garb, which originally meant elegance from the French garbe and the Italian garbo (making Greta Garbo’s name seem somewhat appropriate). The garbist is thus elegant in behavior.
Denary
My lists of obscure words come in tens. There’s a reason for this; people like lists of 10. That’s why David Letterman of the Late Show regularly produces lists of “Top 10 Things,” a tradition that, bizarrely, began on his show with The Top 10 Things that Almost Rhyme with Peas, but normally coincide with what’s in the news. In the 2008 U.S. election, for example, Letterman did “The Top Ten Questions People Are Asking the John McCain Campaign”, “The Top 10 Surprising Things about Obama,” and “The Top 10 Messages on Sarah Palin’s Answering Machine.” In the U.K., The Sun newspaper is forever publishing lists of ten.
I’m simply playing the same tune on a different instrument. The number 10 is, as we all know, the number of fingers on your hand and the basis of our counting system. Ten is also the Pythagorean symbol (number) for completeness because 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. The number of commandments in The Old Testament? Ten, of course. And if you want to get even more biblical, there were 10 generations between Adam and Noah and 10 horns on the Beast of Revelation. In any event, all of these things are decads (groups consisting of 10) and all these postings are denary (consisting of 10 parts). Most importantly, for bloggers like me, denary postings on the web get good readership.
VII
WORDS THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST
“What is required is not a lot words, but effectual ones.”
~ Seneca
Some words shouldn’t exist because there is no logical sense in their existence. All the words I describe here exist. I found them in reputable reference areas on the web or in dictionaries. Nevertheless, they are all ridiculous and unnecessary. I humbly propose that we rid ourselves of these words. Let’s face it; you’ve never met with these words before. So how much of a tragedy would it be if you never meet with them again? And if by some slim chance you actually have already met with some of these words, I’m sure you’ll be happy for them to disappear from our existence anyway. Here’s my list of the superfluous:
Poodle-faker
A poodle-faker is a young man who seeks advancement through his association with female society and particularly wealthy women. The term derives from the use of the term poodle, which was a slang term for a woman in the U.K. at the beginning of the 20th Century, and faking, since the man’s interest is on the money or professional advancement. No matter. That time has gone and this word can happily be put to rest. The word gigolo is perfectly adequate for describing men who trade their charms for wealth through their association with women.
Phobologophobia
There are lots of phobia words I have a problem with. I really don’t like porphyrophobia—the fear of the color purple—not because people have no right to have a fear of a given color, but because there is no corresponding word for fears of other colors in the spectrum, like green, red or blue. I’m not particularly partial to ornithoscelidaphobia, the fear of dinosaurs. First of all, there aren’t any around so being afraid of them makes no sense. But even if you allow that phobias are products of the imagination to some degree, then it’s simply unfair that there is a word for the fear of reptiles from the Mesozoic era, but no words for extinct classes of fauna from other periods. Nevertheless, if we’re going to lose a phobia word, let’s lose phobologophobia, the fear of words about fears. How does that make any sense at all?
Ascian
An ascian is a person (or thing) that has no shadow. The word is connected with the fact that, in the tropics, when the sun is exactly overhead, people don’t cast much of a shadow. But, and I’m going to be completely pedantic here, they do cast a shadow. Even if they didn’t (and they do) they would only not cast a shadow for a very short time in the day, and then only on one day of the year when the sun was precisely overhead. So when would anyone ever use this word? The reason for its existence is thinner than the shadow cast by an ascian stick insect.
Pentapopemptic
If you’ve been divorced two, three, four or six times, there’s no simple word to describe you. But if you’ve been divorced five times, there is. It’s pentapopemtic and it’s superfluous.
Furr-ahin and Fittie-lan
I can’t remember which word is which, but one of these two refers to the hindmost horse on the right pulling a plough and the other to the near horse of the hindmost pair pulling a plough. The way I read that, the furr-ahin can also be the fittie-lan and since no one does horse-pulled ploughs any more, there’s no one to consult about it. Neither can we discover whether there is a word among the ploughmen for the hindmost horse on the left or the far horse of the hindmost pair. But there’s no reason to know, anyway. No matter how charitable we want to be, it’s over for these words. Let’s consign them to some rural word museum.
Mallemaroking
This is another gradually dying word. You can blame Chambers dictionary for that, although you can also blame Chambers for keeping it alive. Mallemaroking is believed to derive from the Dutch mallemerok, which refers to a romping woman or possibly a tomboy. The word means the carousing of seamen in icebound Greenland whaling ships.
Okay. I am not a whaler and never have been, so I’m not really sure what such carousing involves or even why it takes place, except for the obvious explanation that if there’s no whaling to be done, and you are locked in by ice, then you may as well carouse a little. However, the definition of the word is gradually being amputated.
Over time it seems to have lost its Greenland aspect and its whaling aspect, so that in the latest edition of Chambers it is simply the kind of thing that seamen do on icebound ships. My guess is that Chambers is desperately trying to save this word by making it more general. But really, ships don’t get icebound much anymore, so if we’re going to save this word then more cutting is required. I humbly suggest mallemaroking: the carousing of seamen. I make this suggestion because I’m convinced that seamen can be depended upon to carouse at some time or other. Alternatively, let’s forget the damn word.
Zygopleural
I object to the word zygopleural because zygomorphic also exists and means exactly the same thing: having bilateral symmetry. Neither of these words sees a great deal of use because most people are not exactly sure what bilateral symmetry is. One of them should gracefully step aside for the benefit of the other. My choice for the shredder is zygopleural.
Abacinate
To abacinate means to blind someone, but more than that, to blind them by putting a hot copper basin near their eyes. I have two problems with this word. First, blinding someone is not nice behavior and we shouldn’t have too many words to describe such behavior. The second problem I have is it’s far too specific. Such specialization in a word is unnecessary and it should be retired accordingly. Get rid of the word; get rid of the behavior, I say.
Zumbooruk
I have no idea whether it is possible to fire a cannon that is being carried on the back of a camel. My guess is that it is, indeed, possible—if the cannon isn’t too large. But my guess is based entirely on the fact that this word, zumbooruk, exists at all and purportedly refers to a cannon fired from the back of a camel.
Unfortunately, no one is sure how to spell the word; zumbooruck, zomboruk, zamboorak, zamburak or zamburek are all equally valid and the operator of the cannon can be referred to either as a zumboorukchee or a zamburakchi. This is all completely hopeless. How can you have a word with so many spellings? It would be a nightmare at a spelling bee. Who would dare to say that any spelling was actually wrong? No one does cannons on camels anymore and even when they did, no one was sure how to spell the damn word. We can surely let this one go.
Xenoglossy
This is a complete self-contradiction. Xenoglossy is the ability to speak a language without having learned it. You heard me. I simply don’t believe it’s possible to start spontaneously spouting off fluently in an unfamiliar language. Hence, there is no point in having a word for an ability that doesn’t exist. If you ever run into someone who claims to be capable of speaking a language without ever learning it, send this person to me and I’ll happily shoot the faker.
VIII
WORDS YOU DIDN’T KNOW
WERE EPONYMS
“I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Pyrrhic is an odd word—an adjective that only ever describes one noun: victory. It is an eponym, as you probably know, referring to Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus, a Greek king, fought the Romans on several occasions, most famously at the battle of Asculum. He won the battle, but at the cost of 3,500 dead. No matter that 6,000 Romans also died on the field; Pyrrhus was heard to say after the battle that he could not afford another such victory.
The English language contains many eponyms. An eponym is the name of a real or legendary person or thing that has been applied to an object, institution, place, era, activity, etc. Many eponyms are “proprietary eponyms”—Xerox, Hoover, Aspirin, Kleenex and Google, for example—brands or trademarks that have, since their invention or creation, entered the language as common nouns, verbs or adjectives.
To my knowledge there’s only one half-eponym. It is gerrymander, the portmanteau word (see Section XVIII) combining Gerry (after American politician and Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, 1744-1814) and salamander (as in lizard). The term refers to fixing an election by fixing the boundaries of the voting area so that it includes a high percentage of people who are likely to vote for you. The voting district foisted on Massachusetts by Elbridge Gerry, gave rise to an area shaped like a salamander.
In many cases we may know the origin of an eponym or at least we sense that the word is an eponym even if we’re not exactly sure who or what has given the word its name. We’d probably suspect that maverick was an eponym, for example, even if we didn’t know anything of Samuel Augustus Maverick, the American pioneer rancher who never put his brand on his cattle. What I’ve tried to assemble here is a list of surprising eponyms:
Panic
This derives directly from the Greek god Pan, whose domain was nature, fertility, the woods, shepherds and the flocks they minded. Pan liked to party. He spent a good deal of time dancing with nymphs and playing on his pipes. Nevertheless, he was dreaded and feared by those who traveled through the woods by night. Sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, giving us the word panic.
There are many other eponyms from Ancient Greece, including; morphine (from Morpheus, Greek god of dreams), erotic (from Eros, Greek god of love), tantalize (from Tantalus, mythical king of Phrygia) and lesbian (from the Greek poetess, Sappho of Lesbos). From the Roman we get: volcano, vulcanize (from Vulcan, Roman god of fire), fauna (from Faunus, Roman god of pastures), flora (from Flora, Roman goddess of flowers) and venereal (from Venus, Roman goddess of love).