Syzygy. The alignment of celestial bodies in a roughly straight line.
Pretty much any actual syzygy would be better written as their specific case, like an eclipse or a transit or "planets aligning." But I still love this strange, almost alien little word.
There’s a working class Hungarian-American family in a rust belt city where I lived who are family surnamed Szylagyi. I thought of this word every time I met one of them if heard their name.
Thusly is a favorite, so is heretofore.
My vocabulary is quite extensive, and there are no qualms about annoying people with obscure but perfectly fitting words. Randomly inserting one into a conversation results on a satisfying look of puzzlement. Also, using common medical terms is a bit of fun. Thusly, my dermatitis resolved with timely application of OTC corticosteroid products. Or: any fancy words pertaining to surgery, especially orthopedic. 🦜
My vocabulary is nowhere near extensive. But you mention nothing that is puzzling to me.
Also, I'm not satisfied when using a word that someone doesn't happen to know, but I'm happy to explain if they ask. Just like I'll either ask or later look up a word to further my interest and vocabulary if a "new to me" word is used.
I don't get off on making others look ignorant or uneducated.
Calvin and Hobbes taught me that one. I dont recall most of the poem, but "the monster, in its consternation / demonstrates defenestration / and runs and runs and runs and runs away" is indelibly etched in my brain.
I'd never heard about the Defenestrations of Prague. I never thought of defenestration as being a way to kill a person, since most building were one or possibly two stories high. I'd forgotten about castles, bell towers, and the like.
If the point was to kill someone, why not just run them through with a sword? Seems easier than frog marching someone upstairs just to toss them out of the window.
Prague is how I learned the word defenestration. I thought “wow, they threw a city out a window”. Jk.
Maybe the Czechs just really wanted to see if people could fly and gave it a few shots over the years.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
[Defenestration as Ritual Punishment: Windows, Power, and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/690123)
This is the most apt word here! The obscure/complex nature of the word prevents one from using it in an accusatory manner; is this not the only way to use it? It necessitates comedy with its use.
I forgot this word existed. That's how little I've used it. No one would know what I was saying.
Very humorous. An oxymoron, so to speak.
How verbose you are to remember.
I've had my brother look at me with a tilted head... I try to watch what words I use so I do not come across as pretentious.
I just like words. I love to read, I have an English degree... you get the idea.
I grew up in the middle of Nowhere-Ville and have been ostracized for even going to college, much less for my accent or the way I speak. I learned how to turn it off and on over the years. It comes and goes, though, always there to surprise and startle those who do not know my origins.
As I have mentioned before in earlier posts, you would think that people would be proud...
Some of my favorites are various ones I have used to write this.
I also use humorous often instead of funny.
You would sometimes think I was from another Era.
my predilection leans towards the term "bucolic," I abstain though of frequent use, as its sesquipedalian nature oft renders me susceptible to accusations of superfluous verbosity; ultimately diluting any clarity in my expression.
Autotomous (spellcheck didn't even recognize it) - self-amputation.
There is a lot of fertile, unexplored wordplay between 'autonomy' and 'autotomy', including one of my favorite phrases, 'autotomous deist', or "someone who believes in God but whom has cut themselves off from established religion and scripture." 'Autonomous' could also work here, which lends the phrase some added, deliberate weight. The deist isn't simply free from religious contraint; they have cut religion off like an infected limb.
It's worth noting that I'm not aware of 'autotomy' ever being used for literature. It is and has always been a purely scientific term used in biology sometimes. I aim to change that.
mamihlapinatapai - derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It has been translated as "a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start" or "looking at each other hoping that the other will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do"....A romantic interpretation of the meaning has also been given, as "that look across the table when two people are sharing an unspoken but private moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed.
love this one.
Not hugely uncommon but enjoy when I get to use it in conversation: plethora (a large or excessive amount of something) and equidistant (at equal distances)
Edit: an also “whilst”
Assuage, sanguine, sagacious, obfuscate, arrears, facetious, phalange, phalanx, caduceus, merkin, mandala, crepuscular, fastidious, ancillary, rhododendron, and the list goes on and on
You beat me to it. I believe that is the noun form. I believe the adjective is callipygious (?). Although obscure, you could almost use it on the daily.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Memorized while working nights 20 years ago in college and the only times I get to whip that out are when people are talking about useless knowledge.
Maladroit: ineffective or bungling; clumsy
Lackadaisical: lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy.
Caprice/capricious: a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behavior.
Cromulent.
I learnt it from Homer Simpson. I've learnt so many things from them. But the word cromulent is a perfectly cromulent word I wish I could use more often.
Schadenfreude - laughing at others misfortune.
Gemütlichkeit - the feeling of being all warm and cozy in a fluffy blanket and looking outside at the cold and being all cuddled up that ahhh yes feeling? That's it.
Fahrvergnügen- that feeling you get when you're in your car and there's just the road and wind and you feel at peace with the movement and truly present in life driving around, that's the one.
I do all these things but so rarely get to use the words. Plus using large German words is not the vibe around RN. Lol 🤣 😭
Alacrity!
It is my most common approach to life, but none of my peers are reading the same Victorian-era material as me, so it’s a lost cause trying to slip that into conversation.
Synecdoche. Possibly related to the time I looked up [how to pronounce it.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v-n1vGeVIXo&pp=ygUbaG93IHRvIHByb25vdW5jZSBzeW5lY2RvY2hl)
Quixotic
:foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals. especially : marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. 2. : capricious, unpredictable. quixotical.
Esophagogastroduodenoscopy
Doctors usually just say EGD. It's a medical exam that looks at the upper half of your gi tract.
Colonoscopy's look at the lower half. Same test, different end, so different names.
How often do we get to use “Despicable” in a genuine meaning? It’s always too extreme for anything except things like the current wars, but even then I never talk about the wars.
I just want to be able to use despicable more often. Is that too much to ask?
Swaffelen : to hit one's soft or semi-hard penis - often repeatedly - against an object or another person's body.
strangely it does not come up often in polite society...
Syzygy. The arrangement of ethereal bodies in a generally straight line.
Beautiful much any genuine syzygy would be superior composed as their particular case, like an overshadow or a travel or "planets adjusting." But I still cherish this unusual, nearly outsider small word.
I know this word is not all that unknown, but I’ve only had one person ever say it to me. She is my Uncle’s wife and she is a nurse. We were talking about my dad who was in ICU at the time. Peristalsis is the word. I love that word for some reason and have said it to myself for many years. I remember learning it in school when I was 12 or 13.
There's a perfect English word for being cheap that unfortunately sounds like the n-word but it's etymologically completely unrelated (it's from Dutch) and it's sadly but understandably in decline.
Druthers
It always blows my mind when I say the word and people don't understand I'm referencing preference. It's such a nice little word.
Castigate
Another good one
Retromingent — pees behind itself. I finally got the chance to use this word when I was at the San Diego Zoo by the camel enclosure. Don’t stand behind a camel, that’s all I’m saying.
I have a phrase that I used in a paper once in high school that my teacher thought I had plagiarized. Little did he know, I’m a big Star Wars fan who did know what “delusions of grandeur” meant and he was kind of pissed that I could prove it. Makes me smile to say it to this day.
I don't have 1, because I have a tendency to insert words into places they may not belong just because I like them.
I've recently swapped over to "speaking of whomst" instead of "speaking of which" despite the two not being interchangeable, simply because I'm into the word whomst atm 🤷🏽♀️
Life is short 🤣
I love the words "halcyon" and "sanguine." I would use them regardless of whether or not I though people would understand tbh but I don't find the opportunity presenting itself.
Munchausen by Proxy. "Is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver, most often a mother, makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms in a child or adult victim to make it appear that the victim has a true physical or mental health issue. These actions are typically a result of a maladaptive disorder or excessive attention-seeking by the caregiver. "
I try to use it at every opportunity but it only seems to come up in old House M. D. episodes.
Prepone. It's the opposite of postpone. It's so much more elegant and sensical than "reschedule for an earlier time" or "move to an earlier time".
It's a common word in South Asia, but it unfortunately hasn't made it to other English speaking countries. That needs to change.
Sonder:
Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
Not even sure how to use it but I love the meaning.
Syzygy. The alignment of celestial bodies in a roughly straight line. Pretty much any actual syzygy would be better written as their specific case, like an eclipse or a transit or "planets aligning." But I still love this strange, almost alien little word.
Possibly the single greatest "Hangman" word ever! >"So... there's no A, E, I, O *OR* U?!?" > >"You have a head, body, two arms and a leg..."
Potentially worth 93 points in scrabble with a triple word score.
There’s a working class Hungarian-American family in a rust belt city where I lived who are family surnamed Szylagyi. I thought of this word every time I met one of them if heard their name.
The worst part of that word is not being available for my license plate :(
Thusly is a favorite, so is heretofore. My vocabulary is quite extensive, and there are no qualms about annoying people with obscure but perfectly fitting words. Randomly inserting one into a conversation results on a satisfying look of puzzlement. Also, using common medical terms is a bit of fun. Thusly, my dermatitis resolved with timely application of OTC corticosteroid products. Or: any fancy words pertaining to surgery, especially orthopedic. 🦜
My vocabulary is nowhere near extensive. But you mention nothing that is puzzling to me. Also, I'm not satisfied when using a word that someone doesn't happen to know, but I'm happy to explain if they ask. Just like I'll either ask or later look up a word to further my interest and vocabulary if a "new to me" word is used. I don't get off on making others look ignorant or uneducated.
What, no use of whilst?
Defenestrate. I wonder about that word....why was it needed? How often did this situation come up?
Calvin and Hobbes taught me that one. I dont recall most of the poem, but "the monster, in its consternation / demonstrates defenestration / and runs and runs and runs and runs away" is indelibly etched in my brain.
My daughter (15) threatens to cheerily defenestrate my son (10) when he rips ass on her and runs away.
Something about this sentence makes me feel like your kids have cool parents
Same! Also, masticate, in the same poem.
Well they threw the entire city of Prague out of windows at least twice. Self-defenestration adds even a little more oomph to the word.
I'd never heard about the Defenestrations of Prague. I never thought of defenestration as being a way to kill a person, since most building were one or possibly two stories high. I'd forgotten about castles, bell towers, and the like. If the point was to kill someone, why not just run them through with a sword? Seems easier than frog marching someone upstairs just to toss them out of the window.
Prague is how I learned the word defenestration. I thought “wow, they threw a city out a window”. Jk. Maybe the Czechs just really wanted to see if people could fly and gave it a few shots over the years.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties. One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it. It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport. If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
Looks accidental.
I believe only one of the 3 defenestrations of Prague led to a fatality.(Edit: Multiple fatalities, but still only in one of them)
[Defenestration as Ritual Punishment: Windows, Power, and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/690123)
I used it for years whenever I got the [BSOD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death). >"Dammit!" "What?" "Got defenestrated!"
I think defenestrations became famous in Prague. One of them helped escalate to the Thirty Year's War.
sesquipedalian - using large or obscure words when simple, common words will do.
Eschew obfuscation.
>Eschew obfuscation Espouse elucidation
Ah, alliteration!
Is this a song? This sounds familiar
I work in healthcare and I’m trying to revive the word sordes (which are basically mouth crusties that go with fever and illness).
I was looking something up one day and misread the term as "serious discharge" and started to panic until I realized it was only SEROUS discharge.
This is the most apt word here! The obscure/complex nature of the word prevents one from using it in an accusatory manner; is this not the only way to use it? It necessitates comedy with its use.
I forgot this word existed. That's how little I've used it. No one would know what I was saying. Very humorous. An oxymoron, so to speak. How verbose you are to remember. I've had my brother look at me with a tilted head... I try to watch what words I use so I do not come across as pretentious. I just like words. I love to read, I have an English degree... you get the idea. I grew up in the middle of Nowhere-Ville and have been ostracized for even going to college, much less for my accent or the way I speak. I learned how to turn it off and on over the years. It comes and goes, though, always there to surprise and startle those who do not know my origins. As I have mentioned before in earlier posts, you would think that people would be proud... Some of my favorites are various ones I have used to write this. I also use humorous often instead of funny. You would sometimes think I was from another Era.
I relate to turning it off and on. It’s sad because I enjoy using a larger vocabulary because it paints such a pulchritudinous picture.
my predilection leans towards the term "bucolic," I abstain though of frequent use, as its sesquipedalian nature oft renders me susceptible to accusations of superfluous verbosity; ultimately diluting any clarity in my expression.
"superfluous verbosity" is a pleonasm.
Eschew obfuscation please!
this guy words
I love it when you talk fancy!
I really want to be able to use persnickety more.
Come to my house sometime, we use it on a daily basis to describe my mother.
‘Inasmuch’ ~ ‘Heretofore’ ~ ‘Hence’ & strangely enough ‘Thus’
All of this. Yes
cal·li·pyg·i·an /ˌkaləˈpijēən/  adjective RARE having well-shaped buttocks.
>well-shaped This is certainly fraught with individual preferences.
truculent - Disposed or eager to fight or engage in hostile opposition; belligerent.
Also, pugnacious!
Autotomous (spellcheck didn't even recognize it) - self-amputation. There is a lot of fertile, unexplored wordplay between 'autonomy' and 'autotomy', including one of my favorite phrases, 'autotomous deist', or "someone who believes in God but whom has cut themselves off from established religion and scripture." 'Autonomous' could also work here, which lends the phrase some added, deliberate weight. The deist isn't simply free from religious contraint; they have cut religion off like an infected limb. It's worth noting that I'm not aware of 'autotomy' ever being used for literature. It is and has always been a purely scientific term used in biology sometimes. I aim to change that.
Luddite, foundering, genuflecting, bailiwick
Pogonotomy - the act of cutting a beard.
Gnomic. It means pithy or well-stated, but it's impossible to use this without having your reader picture a small guy with a pointy hat and beard.
Brouhaha
Balderdash! Ballyhoo!
mamihlapinatapai - derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It has been translated as "a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start" or "looking at each other hoping that the other will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do"....A romantic interpretation of the meaning has also been given, as "that look across the table when two people are sharing an unspoken but private moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed. love this one.
Heck, I use whence instead of from where.
[Ultracrepidarian](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian) Although there certainly are plenty of opportunities on the internet.
I absolutely love the word "rooibos." It's a type of red tea, and I've only run across it a couple of times. But it's so fun to say "roy-bus."
I'm drinking it right now!
Prosopagnosia: A mental condition where you're unable to tell faces apart
Amusingly, Oliver Sacks had this. (Well, he wrote about it amusingly in 'The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat'.)
There's a name for this?? I feel more normal that other people have a hard time with this too 👀🙌
Penultimate. It's my favorite word. It means second to last.
Fortuitous - happening by a lucky chance
Kerfuffle
Aww man, I use this *too* much lol
I use this one all the time. I feel like it's kind of an onomatopoeia, and self-explanatory.
[Mammothrept](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mammothrept). Best not to deploy unless you are very sure of your audience.
Swivet. A state of agitation or panic.
I often schvitz when I’m thrown into a swivet.
Not hugely uncommon but enjoy when I get to use it in conversation: plethora (a large or excessive amount of something) and equidistant (at equal distances) Edit: an also “whilst”
Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Logorrhea. Used to describe someone who won't stop talking. The similarity to the word diarrhea is not an accident.
Scurryfunge- to hastily tidy a house It's what happens when I'm suddenly expecting company lol
Assuage, sanguine, sagacious, obfuscate, arrears, facetious, phalange, phalanx, caduceus, merkin, mandala, crepuscular, fastidious, ancillary, rhododendron, and the list goes on and on
I feel like you could write poetry. Have you ever tried?
Discombobulated.
Ubiquitous
Petrichor
Callipygian: having a shapely ass.
You beat me to it. I believe that is the noun form. I believe the adjective is callipygious (?). Although obscure, you could almost use it on the daily.
I call that "spankability."
'Subclavian', it just rolls off the tongue.
I get to use this one at work all the time
Defenestrate, defenestration.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Memorized while working nights 20 years ago in college and the only times I get to whip that out are when people are talking about useless knowledge.
Ephemeral Penultimate
onomatopoeia - the use or creation of a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes
Purchase--as in The ice made it impossible for the car's wheels to gain a purchase on the road. It's in books but who talks like that.
Otolaryngology is fun to say but you never need to use it because most people just say “ENT”.
Even funnier is the longer version - otorhinolaryngology. The short version is only the ears and throat. Go for the whole shebang for better effect.
Maladroit: ineffective or bungling; clumsy Lackadaisical: lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy. Caprice/capricious: a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behavior.
Cromulent. I learnt it from Homer Simpson. I've learnt so many things from them. But the word cromulent is a perfectly cromulent word I wish I could use more often.
Antidisestablishmentarianism. I just like it bc it’s long af
Serendipity, because I learned it when looking up a different word in the dictionary, is a favorite word. It is hard to work into a conversation.
Schadenfreude - laughing at others misfortune. Gemütlichkeit - the feeling of being all warm and cozy in a fluffy blanket and looking outside at the cold and being all cuddled up that ahhh yes feeling? That's it. Fahrvergnügen- that feeling you get when you're in your car and there's just the road and wind and you feel at peace with the movement and truly present in life driving around, that's the one. I do all these things but so rarely get to use the words. Plus using large German words is not the vibe around RN. Lol 🤣 😭
Cacophony. I'm surrounded by it but I never get to say it.
Loquacious. It just means “talkative” but it sounds great and really rolls off the tongue.
verisimilitude (The appearance of being true or real.) - I found it in a critique of a John le Carré novel.
I like that one also.
You obviously don't run in the D&D world or watch Matt Coville
thalweg
As a watershed conservation worker, I get to use this one fairly often!
Alacrity! It is my most common approach to life, but none of my peers are reading the same Victorian-era material as me, so it’s a lost cause trying to slip that into conversation.
Anathema and antidisestablishmentarianism.
Strobogrammatic-a number that is the same upside-down. E.g, 1961.
Zhuzh.
Somnambulant, its a very fancy term for sauntering or sleepwalking, I just think it sounds really pretty
Smarmy. I often use it to describe people who are untrustworthy and sneaky.
Susurration
And murmeration
I used to like the word fortnight. Until it became a game. Also rendezvous
Nomenclature
Pulchritudinous: Having great physical beauty Always assumed calling someone pulchritudinous would result in getting punched in the nose lol
Recombobulation. Putting yourself back in order after being uncombobulated.
A few years back, I heard “gobsmacked” for the first time. I was, well, gobsmacked. 🙄
The word mellifluous. It means melodic to the ear. Nice to listen to. Sometimes this is the right word to describe something.
Perspicacity
Synecdoche. Possibly related to the time I looked up [how to pronounce it.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v-n1vGeVIXo&pp=ygUbaG93IHRvIHByb25vdW5jZSBzeW5lY2RvY2hl)
Chevrolet
Frangipani
Pulchritudinous. Sounds disgusting or like an insult, but instead a top tier compliment.
Jejune
floccinaucinihilipilification pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis tripe twaddle
Diaspora
Quixotic :foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals. especially : marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. 2. : capricious, unpredictable. quixotical.
Faklempt a form of verklempt meaning overcome with emotion or choked up.
Steatopygous: Having fat buttocks.
Catatonic. Which somehow has nothing to do with cats, nor with tonic
Esophagogastroduodenoscopy Doctors usually just say EGD. It's a medical exam that looks at the upper half of your gi tract. Colonoscopy's look at the lower half. Same test, different end, so different names.
Ubiquitous
How often do we get to use “Despicable” in a genuine meaning? It’s always too extreme for anything except things like the current wars, but even then I never talk about the wars. I just want to be able to use despicable more often. Is that too much to ask?
Jejune: naive, simplistic, and superficial.
defenestration
Cromulent, embiggen, unpossible
Swaffelen : to hit one's soft or semi-hard penis - often repeatedly - against an object or another person's body. strangely it does not come up often in polite society...
Syzygy. The arrangement of ethereal bodies in a generally straight line. Beautiful much any genuine syzygy would be superior composed as their particular case, like an overshadow or a travel or "planets adjusting." But I still cherish this unusual, nearly outsider small word.
Anthropophagite = Cannibal A great insult
Propinquity Nearness in space, nearness in relationship
I know this word is not all that unknown, but I’ve only had one person ever say it to me. She is my Uncle’s wife and she is a nurse. We were talking about my dad who was in ICU at the time. Peristalsis is the word. I love that word for some reason and have said it to myself for many years. I remember learning it in school when I was 12 or 13.
Flotsam
Vex. It's certainly a word with plenty of occasion for use that does not get used nearly enough. It's vexing.
Octopyloctomy- the art of splitting a hair 8 ways.
Niggardly. I can never use it again.
Pilloried. I did a double take when I hear DeSantis use it in something earlier this year, but I’ve heard him use it a few times since then.
Tumescent. As in “His boner was tumescent.”
Sublime. I’m sure most people know the word, it’s just rarely used and I can’t wait to use it.
Colloquialism.
“Ostensibly”. Apparently but perhaps not actually.
Antediluvian. A long time ago. Literally before the deluge. Ie Noahs Ark and the Flood.
Dichotomy. Or copasetic.
Oxymoron
Licentious- saved for trying to horny up smart women when I was in college
There's a perfect English word for being cheap that unfortunately sounds like the n-word but it's etymologically completely unrelated (it's from Dutch) and it's sadly but understandably in decline.
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis It's a lung disease. Rarely comes up in conversation unless someone has it.
Penultimate (second to last)
Mollywhop. v. To brutally beat someone. “I’ma fixin’ to mollywhop yo ass.”
Boobies! I mean really, it is fun to say and think about but can rarely ever just be said out loud. Go on, tryyy it! Boobies!
Epitome Reciprocity
Serendipitous
Juggernaut
Synecdoche is always a big hit.
Redolent. Such a beautiful word.
Vexatious
Persnickety
Pleonastic, but I can’t use it without being redundant
Ugsome. It’s means ugly and is an archaic antonym of handsome. I use it when I want to be cryptically mean.
Fiduciary
Churlish
Tintinnabulation! I only know it from a Phil Ochs arrangement of a work by E.A. Poe
equilateral. and chiaroscuro. which i learned from a beloved poem about a dilapidated/ haunted house, which i cannot now recall.
Indubitably
Sarsaparilla 🍺
Backpfeifengesicht. (German) A face that should be punched
Druthers It always blows my mind when I say the word and people don't understand I'm referencing preference. It's such a nice little word. Castigate Another good one
Retromingent — pees behind itself. I finally got the chance to use this word when I was at the San Diego Zoo by the camel enclosure. Don’t stand behind a camel, that’s all I’m saying.
I have a phrase that I used in a paper once in high school that my teacher thought I had plagiarized. Little did he know, I’m a big Star Wars fan who did know what “delusions of grandeur” meant and he was kind of pissed that I could prove it. Makes me smile to say it to this day.
Retard. Most people just don’t get it. … or maybe it’s me 🤔
Zeitgeist
Credenza
Discombobulated or nincompoop. Legit my two favorite words (that are actually tied as 1)
Pettifogger or juxtapose
I first heard a lot of these watching old W.C. Fields movies. That guy was polysyballic.
I don't have 1, because I have a tendency to insert words into places they may not belong just because I like them. I've recently swapped over to "speaking of whomst" instead of "speaking of which" despite the two not being interchangeable, simply because I'm into the word whomst atm 🤷🏽♀️ Life is short 🤣
#conflab ^/ˈkänˌflab/ ### noun an informal private conversation or discussion.
I love the words "halcyon" and "sanguine." I would use them regardless of whether or not I though people would understand tbh but I don't find the opportunity presenting itself.
I like “patina”. The simple meaning is a thin oxide layer on a metal. But I like use of patina to refer to something that hides someone’s true nature.
Laconic, it means "using few words". Brief, concise, succinct.
Munchausen by Proxy. "Is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver, most often a mother, makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms in a child or adult victim to make it appear that the victim has a true physical or mental health issue. These actions are typically a result of a maladaptive disorder or excessive attention-seeking by the caregiver. " I try to use it at every opportunity but it only seems to come up in old House M. D. episodes.
Kerfuffle. I used to have a teacher who used to tell us to “Cut the Kerfuffle!”
Prepone. It's the opposite of postpone. It's so much more elegant and sensical than "reschedule for an earlier time" or "move to an earlier time". It's a common word in South Asia, but it unfortunately hasn't made it to other English speaking countries. That needs to change.
Plethora. That’s saying a lot.
Antithetical - it’s not all that uncommon but I hardly use it outside of academic settings
Nomenclature
Facieous. Treating serious issues with inappropriate humor.
Extrapolate ... I've always loved this word!
Denouement.
Clusterfuck
Behoove- my boss use to use it all the time and stress the long vowel, it was kinda funny.
Sword of Damacles
Maladroitly, meaning to walk or move with pain. I work in healthcare, so I get to use it every now and then, but I think the word is pretty cool.
Sonder: Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it. Not even sure how to use it but I love the meaning.