My wife and I have a peculiar love for dictionaries and obscure vocabulary. We both read dictionaries just for fun–I know, we are weird–but at least we are weird together. So here is a list of some fun obscure words that you might try to work into a bloggernacle conversation sometime. Feel free to let us know about your favorite, obscure English words in the comments…
Blepharon – He that hath great[large/bushy] eyebrows.
Cataglotism – a thrusting out of the tongue in kissing
Doattee – to nod the head when sleep comes on whilst one is sitting up,–this action is to be noticed in church
Grimgribber – a lawyer. Also, the technical jargon used by a lawyer
Inwit – conscience, as distinguished from outwit, knowledge, ability, information.
Knevel – the moustache.
Numbles, Umbles – Praecordia, as the hart, the spleene, the lunges, and liver. “To eat [h]umble pie,” to eat one’s own words–that is, to stoop, to eat a pie made of umbles, as it were.
Prorump – to break forth
Quop – to throb with pain
Shivviness – the feeling of roughness caused by a new undergarment
Sloom – to sleep heavily and soundly; distinguished from slumber, to sleep lightly.
Spermologer – a picker-up of trivia, or current news; a gossip-monger.
Thorough Cough – Coughing and breaking wind backwards at the same time.
Wrine – a deep line in the face; a furrow; hence, the diminutive wrinkle, a small wrine.
Ziff – a beard
So given the persistent idea that facial hair is somehow frowned upon in the Church, would that mean that a moustache on a Mormon is an “Evil Knevel”?
(Thank you! Don’t forget to tip your waitress!)
So, what about she that hath (alas!) great and bushy eyebrows? Blepharoness??
Shivviness?…I thought it would be skiviness.
It’s not _that_ unusual, but Mardell and I regularly use “defenestration,” especially when discussing how the kids have been behaving.
What do you call a stamp collector eating lunch at a strip club?
We’re all afraid to find out, Steve (FSF)…
A masticating philatelist
What about transmogrify? I love that word. That, and perspicacious. But I don’t have much occasion to use the latter (unless it’s in reference to myself – ha, ha).
Fard. You forgot Fard. Fard is my favorite word.
Fard v. to make oneself up. (i.e., that thing most women do in the bathroom before heading out. Someone have the gall to fard in enclosed places like the car.)
I’m glad we finally know what ziff means.
Do you mean obscure? Or do you mean arcane or recondite?
People look at me strange when I admit (sometimes as a badge of honor) that I like to read math books…
but dictionaries??? wow…
I could only hope to attain such a level of geekiness.
Some words I’ve had to look up recently:
apodictic: necessarily or demonstrably true; incontrovertible.
doxology: an expression of praise to God, especially a short hymn sung as part of the Christian worship service.
kerygma: the proclamation of eternal truths, especially as taught in the Gospels.
paraenesis: advice, exhortation or instruction; moral exhortation.
Parousia: the Second Coming.
prolepsis: the anachronistic representation of something as existing before its proper or historical time.
soteriology: the theological doctrine of salvation as effected by Jesus.
vaticinate: to prophesy, foretell.
Most of these I had to look up because of John Wansbrough’s book “The Sectarian Milieu.”
Odd, somehow I managed to put my final line in the midst of my comment. Anyone able to fix that for me? [Editor: Done]
Pogonophobe
It’s timely considering the John Bolton hearings.
From Webster, 1913:
Dromaeognathous
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