What's an obsolete or incredibly obscure word you think people should know?
What's an obsolete or incredibly obscure word you think people should know?
Overmorrow refers to the day after tomorrow and I feel like it comes in quite handy for example.
Sonder (noun): the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles: In a state of sonder, each of us is at once a hero, a supporting cast member, and an extra in overlapping stories.
callipygous : having shapely buttocks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins
Just because it sounds cool.
- Paramour
It sounds fancy, but means a casual lover. A fuck buddy. A friend with benefits. Though it can also carry the implication of being an out-of-wedlock lover, as it dates back to a time where having a fuck buddy was almost certainly a sign of married infidelity.
- Kith
Means one's friends and other people they are close to that aren't family. Often paired with "kin". Kith and kin. Friends and family.
Borborygmus I use often enough, but it's not widely known. It's the gurgling sound produced by the movement of gas through your intestines.
Limaceous I almost never use, but I enjoy it anyway. It means characteristic of or pertaining to slugs.
And lastly, tawdry is one of my favorites meaning showy but cheap and poor quality.
Not a word, but there's a specific phrase uttered when you casually pass by someone working, stop for a chat, and then genuinely wish them well with their work as you leave.
This phrase does not exist in English:
- "Break a leg" is close, but more reserved for some grand performance
Nor does it exist in German:
- "Viel Spass/Glück" (Have fun, Good Luck) is also close, but has an element of sarcasm and/or success through chance.
- (Edit) "Frohes Schaffen" (Happy 'getting it done') is pretty spot on.
In Turkish, you just say "Kolay Gelsin", meaning "May the work come easy so that you finish sooner".
Its such a useful unjudgemental phrase, easily uttered, that I've seen nowhere else. Maybe other languages have it too.
I've got six of them:
- Tittynope: "A small amount left over; a modicum."
- Cacography: "bad handwriting or spelling."
- Epeolatry: "the worship of words."
- Kakistocracy: "a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens."
- Oikophilia: "love of home"
- Tenebrous: "dark; shadowy or obscure"
Brobdingnagian.
It's a very big word that means very big.
It comes from Gulliver's travels. The Brobdingnagians are giants, 12 times the height of humans. The word isn't limited to that scale, but it's definitely for things that are unusually large compared to us.
It's the literal opposite of Lilliputian, which is from the better known race from "Travels" that are 1/12 our size.
It's my absolute favorite word. Not just because it's a literary reference but it's fun to say. Brob ding nag ian. It just burbles off the tongue like a drunken stream stumbling among the rocks of its bed. And, it's a big word that means big, which is just fun wordplay. Like the phobia of big words, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which was inevitable as soon as the idea of a phobia of big words was conceived.
Duodenum.
Doo-odd-in-umm.
The duodenum is the first section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals
Meant to say in my Nero Wolfe comment - there's a Lemmy community for interesting words at !wotd@lemmy.world - it's not very busy, but still.
Obstreperous - noisy or difficult to control (as in "the boy is cocky and obstreperous")
An ultracrepidarian—from ultra- ("beyond") and crepidarian ("things related to shoes")—is a person considered to have ignored this advice and to be offering opinions they know nothing about.
The word is derived from a longer Latin phrase and refers to a story from Pliny the Elder
The phrase is recorded in Book 35 of Pliny the Elder's Natural History as ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret[1] ("Let the cobbler not judge beyond the crepida") and ascribed to the Greek painter Apelles of Kos. Supposedly, Apelles would put new paintings on public display and hide behind them to hear and act on their reception.[2] On one occasion, a shoemaker (Latin sutor) noted that one of the crepides[a] in a painting had the wrong number of straps and was so delighted when he found the error corrected the next day that he started in on criticizing the legs.[2] Indignant, Apelles came from his hiding place and admonished him to confine his opinions to the shoes.[2] Pliny then states that since that time it had become proverbial.[2]
I'm currently reading through all of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries, and one fun feature is that he almost always includes one or more very obscure words. It's a nice little thing to look out for.
In the one I'm currently reading it's, "peculate," meaning to embezzle or steal money. Others include:
- Plerophory - Fullness, especially of conviction or persuasion
- Apodictically - From apodictic: clearly established or beyond dispute
- Usufruct - The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property short of the destruction or waste of its substance
- Acarpous - Not producing fruit; sterile; barren
- Yclept - By the name of
- Eruction - A belch or burp
I had a look to see if I could find a full list but sadly not. However most Wikipedia entries for the individual novels include a section called, "The unfamiliar word," if you want to find more.
Grandiloquent/sesquipedalian. It's what you get when you use everything in this thread ₍^ >ヮ<^₎ .ᐟ.ᐟ
/s
Vituperative. Means vicious.
"Philomot" was always pretty charming. "The color of a dead leaf."
Defenestrate means to throw out of a window.
For example, "Someone should defenestrate Putin."
Vulgar Argot - a word or phrase that is obsolete or incredibly obscure.
Scrofulous - a) having a diseased run-down appearance. b) morally contaminated
I learned this word when I heard someone being described as a 'scrofulous drinkist' lol
Salitter is my answer to this one every time.
The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind.
Here, also.
Jocund: cheerful and lighthearted.
From Romeo and Juliet:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
Crepuscular. Related to twilight, dimness, the golden hour.
Seems like every time you use it you'll end up having to explain what it means unless you're playing D&D
Logoparalysis. https://lemmus.org/post/6454872
perseveration
Lemmy
Coprophasia
Smaragdin which means "green"
The
Euouae
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euouae
Euouae (/juː.ˈuː.iː/; sometimes spelled Evovae)[1] is an abbreviation used as a musical mnemonic in Latin psalters and other liturgical books of the Roman Rite. It stands for the syllables of the Latin words saeculorum Amen, taken from the Gloria Patri, a Christian doxology that concludes with the phrase in saecula saeculorum. Amen. The mnemonic is used to notate the variable melodic endings (differentiae) of psalm tones in Gregorian chant.
In some cases, the letters of Euouae may be further abbreviated to E—E.[2] A few books of English chant (notably Burgess and Palmer's The Plainchant Gradual) make use of oioueae for the equivalent English phrase, "world without end. Amen".
According to Guinness World Records, Euouae is the longest word in the English language consisting only of vowels, and also the English word with the most consecutive vowels.[3] As a mnemonic originating from Latin, it is unclear that it should count as an English word; however, it is found in the unabridged Collins English Dictionary.[4]
Two words technically, but "Nothing doing!"
Sort of an old fashioned way to say "no way"
Rob is a name in English. Rob means slave in Bosnian.
Serendipity, idk it sounds cool, "serendipitous" moments happen a lot irl (e.g. forgetting to bring ur wallet with u to the supermarket but minutes later, you end up finding a coin in a random pocket from your jacket to unlock a shopping cart), but it almost only sees its use in fiction, like.....
coprophagia- the consumption of feces.
