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Unusual and amusing English words

32 pointsby jergoshabout 15 years ago

12 comments

pgabout 15 years ago
Alas these are mostly neologisms created by combining roots from classical languages. That's a recipe for creating new "obscure" words pretty much on demand. The best sort of obscure words are ones that are obscure because they're old or highly specialized, not because someone made them up and they never really became part of the spoken language.
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tptacekabout 15 years ago
Here's another cool list, very similar; the standard on this list is, "words so interesting that David Foster Wallace circled them in his dictionary":<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2250784" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/id/2250784</a><p>(Teaser: conchoidal, corvee, demulcent, exergue, gramnvirous, etc etc etc).
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SlyShyabout 15 years ago
Beware, some definitions here are incorrect.<p>For example, Witzelsucht, which is correctly defined at Wikipedia. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witzelsucht" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witzelsucht</a><p>For people interested, Phonistry maintains some much nicer (longer, etc.) lists. <a href="http://phrontistery.info/w.html" rel="nofollow">http://phrontistery.info/w.html</a>
tetsuo13about 15 years ago
Unrelated: What is the point in publishing an interesting list such as this and then restricting my ability to highlight so I can copy and paste? (Chrome 4.1 on Windows)
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charabout 15 years ago
This reminds me of that board game (I forget the name) in which some silly definition is read and the players have to make up words and convince their opponents (who are guessing which word matches the definition) that their word is correct. With some of these words, I feel like I'm playing that game and someone is trying to trick me. I mean, zenzizenzizenzic is a number raised to the eighth power? Seriously? But it exists! <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic</a>
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dctoedtabout 15 years ago
Next time I need a put-down for someone's argument, I think I might call it "jumentous," which according to this page means "[s]melling like horse urine."
JoeAltmaierabout 15 years ago
My favorite: callipygean
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ZeroGravitasabout 15 years ago
Reminded me of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd (creator of QI)'s <i>The Meaning of Liff</i>:<p><a href="http://folk.uio.no/alied/TMoL.html" rel="nofollow">http://folk.uio.no/alied/TMoL.html</a>
rraduabout 15 years ago
"Let's get capernoited" is the new "Let's get wasted"<p>Yeah, that was a witzelsucht
parboabout 15 years ago
I didn't find my favourite in this list: wayzgoose.
elblancoabout 15 years ago
No schadenfreude?
jafl5272about 15 years ago
They missed "discombobulate"