I’ve been on a quest to expand my vocabulary for much of my adult life. The past couple of years have seen an unprecedented surge in word-nerd activity.
As I outlined in part one and part two of this exhaustive linguistic tour, I now stand atop a mountain of phrases, foreign and domestic. And I’m struggling to make sense of my findings.
In this final instalment, we’re looking at vintage words, bawdy words, pretend words, and intimidating German words.
Some of these words are recondite, some are merely picayune. But for me, each of them expresses my immarcescible struggle to learn every word that exists.
The Words I Love
Let’s start on a positive note this time. These are the words that make my Quixotic Word Quest seem briefly worthwhile. Each word describes a role of some sort, and each is a joy in itself.
Amanuensis takes a potentially tedious job (secretary/scribe) and imbues it with the qualities of dignity and symbiosis. In this role, you might be the essential conduit that ensures Paradise Lost or Citizen Kane makes it out into the world.
On a similar note, it’s very difficult to believe these days that anyone was ever paid to produce ‘light, stylish writings, usually on literary or intellectual subjects’. But if a name for the profession exists – belletrist – then it must have been a real job once, right?
On the other end of the spectrum, there are few epithets more wonderfully disparaging and unglamorous than mullocker. The very word seems to stumble and lollop out of one’s mouth, lugging an unbalanced load on its weary shoulders.
While we’re being derogatory: who among has not at some point, acted like a mumpsimus? I’m fascinated to observe this obstinate, aggravating tendency in others, and in myself. It’s a microcosmic word, carrying the promise of an epic future blog post within it.
In my youth, I was excited to discover cosmonaut as the Soviet variation on ‘astronaut’. It sounded somehow more futuristic and romantic. Several decades later, I found myself bolding going even further into spacefaring jargon, with the delightful addition of another variant: taikonaut.
Some other recent favourites: captious, constancy, cozenage, etiolated, fare-thee-well, lotophagous, homiletic, margravine, minatory, perturbation, phrontistery, refractory, rick rack, telos, tendresse, treen, spomenik, sward.
The Bawdy Words
Unsurprisingly, many of these snigger-inducing words also qualify as favourites.
During the Dictionary Adventures of my twenties I was delighted to learn both blowsy and slattern within a short period of time, and later sonsy, popsy, and doxy, all of which seem redolent of saucy seaside postcards.
In recent years I’ve been encouraged to discover that the supply of bawdy words hasn’t been exhausted.
Along with vintage euphemisms (sporting girls) I’ve encountered words with a sultry, vaguely mythic construction (seraglio), and those with winkingly burlesque overtones (zaftig and embonpoint).
Many of these words fall into the Utterly Useless category, however. Personally I’d rather not encounter a speculum unless it proves medically urgent. Likewise, there seems little utility in understanding what milt is.
It’s eel sperm.
The Pretend Words
Ghost words and fictitious entries appear in many dictionaries.
Cromulent is stuck in my head and continues to turn up in painfully un-ironic circumstances
I don’t have any problem with learning the occasional neologism. They’re fun. Who wouldn’t want a serving of funistrada or to admit to an occasional bout of esquivalence?
But I do like to have some advance warning if the word I’m learning is bullshit. I just want to be in on the joke.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case when I transcribed cromulent, a nonce word that I later discovered was coined for a 1996 episode of The Simpsons.
I arrived at that error via a double misfortune. First, I heard the word used on a podcast without any contextual clues. Then I validated my miscomprehension by searching out a largely straight-faced definition.
The thing is, now the word is stuck in my head. But unlike some of my favourite neologisms (interfrastically or friscalating), cromulent continues to turn up in painfully un-ironic circumstances.
Where appropriate or fitting or even apposite should helpfully appear, cromulent jumps in to make me look like an idiot.
Curse you, Miss Hoover!
The Flea Market Words
During my word-hunting escapades, I’ve started a small side business in collecting vintage words. Most of them sound like they could only appear in context when accompanying American 1930s newsreel footage.
They fall into several key categories: words describing young ladies (chorine, hoyden, soubrette), the effects of booze (turnt, walleyed), disreputable activity (fink, donnybrook, eyewash) and the rural landscape (hogwallow, hoosegow).
Most prolific of all are the insult words that can be applied to both individuals (corn-pone, mossback, nudnik, palooka, schlemiel, tinhorn) and also to their means of transport (hooptie).
I’ll never get to use these words in any meaningful way, but I can sit and admire my dusty collection from time to time.
See also: pack rat, rock-ribbed, squinny, towhead.
The Loanwords and Latin Phrases
In many situations, using a Latin phrase will probably make you sound more intelligent. Cui bono, mirabile dictu, exemplum virtutis – take your pick.
On a similar note, using a French loanword will probably make you sound more sophisticated (éminence grise, lèse-majesté) – as long as you don’t encounter a lurking pronunciation issue.
Yet if my experience of the past two years is anything to go by, it’s the Germans who produce the most densely packed and esoteric loanwords.
It had me wondering about whether the native speakers actually use these words and phrases.
So recently, I asked a real live German person for their perspective on words I had collected in the past couple of years. These were her responses.
- Weltanschauung. People use that a lot. It means the way you see the world. You can use it to exaggerate. “I don’t get along with this person because of their weltanschauung.”
- Künstlerroman. I’ve heard it before, but I’m not very familiar with swanky literary words anymore.
- Gesamtkunstwerk. I use this word sarcastically. If my baby made a mess I’d call it his gesamtkunstwerk.
- Wunderkammer. Never heard this one before.
- Kinderpunsch. This is just hot apple juice.
- Sprechgesang. A German word for rap. Hip and cool to use this word. A hipster word.
This collection of Teutonic loanwords seems to serve as a kind of microcosm of my entire lexicon: an awkward and incomplete linguistic blend, encompassing the trendy, the obscure, the moribund and the ironic.
Now, if only there was a word for such a thing…
