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.
Shemomedjamo - Georgian word meaning to eat past the point of fullness because it tastes so good or as I heard it, "I accidentally ate the whole thing."
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
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.
Widdershins. It means counter to the sun's direction , and was seen as inauspicious. Counter-clockwise, before clocks.
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]
- 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.
My contribution is katzenjammer, which is a word describing a really bad hangover (in the English language). I believe it is used a bit differently in the German language, but don't take my word for it.
Vulgar Argot - a word or phrase that is obsolete or incredibly obscure.
Defenestrate means to throw out of a window.
For example, "Someone should defenestrate Putin."
Grandiloquent/sesquipedalian. It's what you get when you use everything in this thread ₍^ >ヮ<^₎ .ᐟ.ᐟ
/s
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.
Internecine, meaning "destructive to both sides in a conflict".
Petty bickering like that divorce where they had a judge adjudicate the distribution of their beanie baby collection was internecine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins
Just because it sounds cool.
callipygous : having shapely buttocks
Jocund: cheerful and lighthearted.
From Romeo and Juliet:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
Obstreperous - noisy or difficult to control (as in "the boy is cocky and obstreperous")
Autodefenestration is one of my faves. The act of throwing yourself out of a window.
If you’re throwing someone or something out, then it’s just plain defenestration
Duodenum.
Doo-odd-in-umm.
The duodenum is the first section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals
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.
Logoparalysis. https://lemmus.org/post/6454872
No one mentioned "niggardly" yet? What's going on?
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.
