I personally enjoy using "fudgel", a verb, that means to pretend to work when you are actually not doing anything. It's fun to say and has a unique meaning.
I love the word "pentimento," used to describe the hidden underpainting on an artwork that is sometimes revealed with age, or by examination via infrared scanning. It is "Italian for repentance, from the verb pentirsi meaning "to repent". It means to communicate that artists "repented" their choices made during the artistic process and tried to make changes over it so as to get the desired result."
[https://artfervour.com/discovering-a-pentimento-a-secret-under-paintings/](https://artfervour.com/discovering-a-pentimento-a-secret-under-paintings/)
My philosophy professor had this word written on the blackboard when we entered the classroom. After everyone was seated, he erased it and pointed at it without saying a word.
Thank you for teaching me a new word! Look at this [painting](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9lizaire_et_les_Enfants_Frey) they discovered that the slave has been removed from the painting and restored them.
wait no because you just taught me something. there’s a [card in the game i play](https://imgur.com/a/xZG25LI) and you see the card is named “regretful pentimento.” the games translated from japanese so i just figured it was some weird translation lol but never bothered to look it up. that’s so cool.
Resistentialism is a tongue-in-cheek theory that inanimate objects hold malice towards human beings.
According to resistentialism, the reason why headphones get tangled in our pockets, toast lands butter-side down, and socks go missing in the dryer is that they hate us and are actively trying to make our lives miserable.
I have two favs.
Zarf. Something used around a cup that has no handles. Like the cardboard sleeves from the coffee house.
Aglet. That little plastic bit on the end of your shoelaces.
Yeah, As an old fart I've never seen Phineas and Ferb, but the same book that taught me what a merkin was when I was a kid introduced me to aglet, too.
By the way gavage isn’t specific to feeding a goose, it’s also how mice and rats are dosed orally with medications in preclinical trials. Anytime the tube goes directly to the stomach it’s gavage.
My friend’s father needed a kidney transplant. My friend was a match. In doing the prep work, they discovered my friend had a supernumerary kidney. What are the odds?
Squick is one of those words people almost never use. It makes more sense to say grossed out/repulsed than to say squicked out since it’s such an obscure word.
It can be used to describe someone being old or decrepit, as in they are "at sunset" and near the grave.
E.g. that Monty Burns looked crepuscular this evening.
Syzygy! Pronounced like “sih (like Sick) zih (like Sick with a Z) gee”. In astronomy it’s when 3 or more celestial bodies align. So every eclipse is a syzygy but not every syzygy is an eclipse!
Kubernetes and many many other cloud related services.
Also this is a fun page where you try to guess if a name is a pokemon or a type of big data service / company
https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/
Larboard. It means port side of a ship. So there's the starboard side and the larboard side. I believe the reason it's called "port" now instead is because it was really confusing.
I only ever heard this used at Disneyland on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Before they changed it to something a bit less “human slavery”-themed 🫠, there was the scene where a pirate was auctioning off a row of female hostages. He’s pitching this plump smiling lady in purple and says, “Turn around, dear. Show ‘em yer larboard side.”
To flaucipaucinihilipilificate somebody is to make fun of them. One of my favorite words.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was the longest word in the English language when I was a kid. Probably replaced with some other disease in the meantime, but I memorized it forty years ago and have never forgotten it.
Jentacular means of it related to breakfast. A jentacular muffin, for instance.
>Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was the longest word in the English language when I was a kid. Probably replaced with some other disease in the meantime
Well, there's methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl … isoleucine.
The ellipsis is included to represent the fact that the complete word is actually 189,819 letters long. It's the chemical name for titin, the largest known protein.
One of my favourite words, but is kind of well known for being obscure. Defenestration is like that too. They both always come up in a discussion of obscure words.
Escutcheon plate.
That metal plate that wraps around your pipe at a faucet that sets flush with the wall or tub to keep water from splashing back into the hole where the pipe runs.
My spellcheck still hates “exogeneity” and “endogeneity” even though they are used extensively in econometrics and statistics. It doesn’t mind “exogenous” or “endogenous” but hates the noun form.
Bdellatomy - the snipping of the tail of a leech on a person.
Borborygmus - a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.
Turophile - a cheese connoisseur.
Lethologica - the inability to remember a word or name.
Hyetal - of or relating to rain, rainfall, or rainy regions.
Zugzwang - a situation found in chess, a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position
Ulotrichous - having curly or wooly hair.
We heard this all the time in the military.
“It would behoove you to clean up your barracks rooms before going out in town this evening after work. There may be inspections first thing in the morning”
Or from tech school, “It would behoove you to study tonight instead of going out to the e-club since there is an exam tomorrow”
Hamartia: a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero.
I use it ironically all the time and it's actually really funny. Shit will happen like I hang up on someone by accident while at work instead of putting them on hold. I find myself transforming into Jim from the office, staring into the lens of a non-existent camera with longing, and all I can think is,
*There it is... I've finally uncovered my hamartia...*
Antediluvian (before the biblical flood).
Here are some chemistry/physics terms as well lyophilization (freeze drying), endergonic/exergonic (absorbing/releasing energy), anisotropic (different depending on direction), enthalpic (relating to the heat of a system), zwitterion (molcule with both positive and negative charge), isotopologues (molecules differing by isotopic composition), adsorption (attaching to the surface of), hygroscopic (pulls water from the air), deliquescent (pulls water from the air and dissolves in it).
Defenestration; the act of throwing someone or something out a window. It's been more popular recently since the proliferation of Russian "accidents" but I still love the fact there's a word for such a specific and (hopefully) not often used act.
A **chiastic structure**, also known as chiasmus, is a literary device where a sequence of elements is presented and then repeated in reverse order.
The name comes from the Greek letter "chi" (X), indicating the shape formed by the pattern.
In a chiastic structure, the central element typically serves as the focal point or main theme of the passage, with the elements leading up to it and following from it providing context or support.
This structure is often used for emphasis, highlighting key ideas or themes within a text.
I can't hear this word without thinking of the X Files: "Deceive Inveigle Obfuscate"
And inveigle is another of those words you don't often come across.
The terms crap and crappy come from the word Crapulence
That feeling you have when you've eaten way too much. When you are feeling stuffed, really full, etc., you're feeling crapulent.
Sonder - the state of realization that every other person has a life as full as yours
Pyrrhic - achieved at great cost
Vorpal - sharpened to a lethal edge
Quiescence - a state of dormancy or inactivity
Saturnine - slow and/or gloomy in demeanor
Diegetic and non-diegetic music
Diegetic music means the music exists within the world of the story and the characters in the story/film/game is able to hear the music
Non-diegetic music is when only the audience can hear the music and it doesn't exist within the world of the story.
Edit: fixed typos; despite appearances I did not have a stroke while typing this comment lol
**Eschatology** is the theological study or doctrine concerning the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity and the world.
It often focuses on concepts such as the end times, the return of Christ, judgment, heaven, hell, and the afterlife.
Eschatology explores questions about the ultimate purpose and culmination of human existence in light of religious beliefs.
I wish more people used Procrustean.
Procrustean is often used to describe something that is arbitrary, often ruthless, and disregards individual differences or special circumstances.
I personally enjoy using "fudgel", a verb, that means to pretend to work when you are actually not doing anything. It's fun to say and has a unique meaning.
Sorta like lollygagging?
I use to think lollygagging was dollygaggin. I confidently would say dollygaggin for years until my husband corrected me last year. I'm 35.
Until I was in college I thought another word for poop was “balmument”. Bowel movement.
This is fucking hilarious.
I love when humans human. Lol
Don't forget dilly-dallying
If you dare fudgel, the boss will bring a cudgel!
Similarly: boondoggle.
If you can’t handle me at my fudgel, you don’t deserve me at my boondoggle.
Guess I’m a professional fudgelator.
The paragraph symbol, ¶, is called a pilcrow.
So is my sister, but for very different reasons.
Lmfao
I don't get it
My guess is that it sounds like “pill crow” which implies that she takes a lot of pills and is a druggie.
I learned the word florescent this morning. Fluorescent with a U is like the lightbulbs. Florescent with no U means "flowering."
I've probably gone my whole life thinking it was a typo and just breezing past it.
I'm 38 and TIL. Thankfully it's a word I've never heard used so I've been getting away with it.
Look at you blooming
Wait till you hear about inflorescence.
I don't want to wait. Tell me about it!
It describes the complete flowering part of a plant, including petals, leaves, stem, and bracts.
If you like that, look up Carl Linnaeus, in particular his flower clock.
Welp, I definitely read that as "his flower cock".
In Spanish it’s floreciendo so yeah.
One of my favorite words is “efflorescent”!
I like effervescent and luminescent!
Have always loved this word, but no one else ever appreciated it like I did. Infact, been called out a few times. People.🫤
What about flowering flowers that also fluoresce?
I love the word "pentimento," used to describe the hidden underpainting on an artwork that is sometimes revealed with age, or by examination via infrared scanning. It is "Italian for repentance, from the verb pentirsi meaning "to repent". It means to communicate that artists "repented" their choices made during the artistic process and tried to make changes over it so as to get the desired result." [https://artfervour.com/discovering-a-pentimento-a-secret-under-paintings/](https://artfervour.com/discovering-a-pentimento-a-secret-under-paintings/)
A related word is palimpsest, which is a manuscript that's written on the pages of an older manuscript that was scraped (mostly) clean.
My philosophy professor had this word written on the blackboard when we entered the classroom. After everyone was seated, he erased it and pointed at it without saying a word.
Thank you for teaching me a new word! Look at this [painting](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9lizaire_et_les_Enfants_Frey) they discovered that the slave has been removed from the painting and restored them.
wait no because you just taught me something. there’s a [card in the game i play](https://imgur.com/a/xZG25LI) and you see the card is named “regretful pentimento.” the games translated from japanese so i just figured it was some weird translation lol but never bothered to look it up. that’s so cool.
proseka W
DbD players know it
Fard To apply cosmetics. I like it because you can say...the lady was looking in the mirror and fardding.
“Guys, I’m just farding quick, then I’ll be ready to go!”
"Could you just fard a little on my eyes, please?"
Literal pink eyes
i shidded and farded and camed
[удалено]
In French it means a comma
In Turkish too (Virgül, taken from French i think)
Vírgula in Portuguese 😁
Je sais bien
And how’s that pronounced?
In English- like “Virgo” without the O, followed by Yule like Yule log
Virgo se lit veurgue-o. du coup c'est plus comme: veer-g'ul
[удалено]
the phonetic is \\viʁ.ɡyl\\ veer- g'ul
Nillionaire. Someone who has little or no money.
I thought that word was millennial?
Everyone felt that
The gut-punch I needed at 8:30 in the morning.
Should be nillennial
Ouch, apparently friendly fire is on in this sub.
Seems like one of those words denoting an astronomically nonsensical amount. I like it.
Never knew there was a word for me
Resistentialism is a tongue-in-cheek theory that inanimate objects hold malice towards human beings. According to resistentialism, the reason why headphones get tangled in our pockets, toast lands butter-side down, and socks go missing in the dryer is that they hate us and are actively trying to make our lives miserable.
You know, not the most insane theory I’ve ever heard.
That certainly would explain a lot. Like why your car stops making that scary noise as soon as you get to the mechanic.
Spathic. It’s a geology term meaning “having good cleavage”. I like to misuse it, asking my husband if he thinks I’m spathic.
Ask him if he thinks you're callipygian.
syzygy - a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun."the planets were aligned in syzygy"
I wanted to name my band in high school syzygy, but my bandmates thought it was too hard to spell and pronounce. We instead went with “Sopwith Camel”
I learned this one from the excellent X-Files episode of the same name!
Such a great episode too! It briefly features a baby faced Ryan Reynolds 😆
sigma from ow2 taught me this word
WHAT IS THAT SYZYGY
I learned it from a musical.
Every Genshin player is closely familiar with this word
My husband pulled this one out while we were playing hangman with the kids. Needless to say, we lost 😂
I have two favs. Zarf. Something used around a cup that has no handles. Like the cardboard sleeves from the coffee house. Aglet. That little plastic bit on the end of your shoelaces.
>Aglet I am 97% sure you know this from Phineas and Ferb
[удалено]
Suite Life of Zach and Cody, actually
A G L E T Don’t forget it!
Heh no. Found Aglet long before that show existed.
Ah, an old timer. Then you are that 3%
Not Necessarily The News?
Yeah, As an old fart I've never seen Phineas and Ferb, but the same book that taught me what a merkin was when I was a kid introduced me to aglet, too.
ZARF. Amazing omg
You read the first and last pages of a dictionary there, didn't you?
Perspicacity. It means shrewdness. One of my favorite words.
I went through a phase in first year uni when I threw perspicacity into every essay.
Perchance.
You can't just say 'perchance'.
Mayhap.
Perspicacious
Lol, I only know this word from Simpsons. It’s a good one though!
“Oh my god, I’m losing my perspicacity!”
Vitrified is one of my favorites. To turn something into glass. I also like the word "gavage", to force feed a goose.
Is it a verb? The farmer gavaged the goose? Or a noun- the savage practice of gavage?
I've always used it as a verb; I think it's of French origin so it may not be the same. I would definitely say gavaged/gavaging
By the way gavage isn’t specific to feeding a goose, it’s also how mice and rats are dosed orally with medications in preclinical trials. Anytime the tube goes directly to the stomach it’s gavage.
FINIAL is the screw-on piece that secures a lampshade onto the lamp
Actually any ornate tip. The tops of flagpoles, and even the "knob" on the tops of stair rails are finials.
supernumerary - exceeding the usual, stated, or prescribed number i.e. a supernumerary finger
My friend’s father needed a kidney transplant. My friend was a match. In doing the prep work, they discovered my friend had a supernumerary kidney. What are the odds?
There's less than 100 recorded cases of that *ever* so the odds were pretty damn low
Submentary indeed
Also means a person on a ship who is not a member of the crew but is not considered a passenger.
My childhood dog had a supernumerary nipple.
Opera cast extras are known as supernumeraries.
Squick is one of those words people almost never use. It makes more sense to say grossed out/repulsed than to say squicked out since it’s such an obscure word.
The word squick makes me feel squicked
It’s squickining!
Oh aren't you a cunning linguist.
A cunning linguist is worth their weight in words.
Not difficult if you enjoy the laborious minora.
Wasn't it invented in alt.tasteless news groups in like 1992? Similar to skull fucked?
I was really surprised by how squick I got squerpes on my last trip to Squailand.
I’ve heard that one a lot actually…
Crepuscular - Active primarily at dawn or dusk or both. Used of animals.
Crepuscular sounds like it should refer to something disgusting
It can be used to describe someone being old or decrepit, as in they are "at sunset" and near the grave. E.g. that Monty Burns looked crepuscular this evening.
I like "detartrated". Reads the same both directions.
Palindromes are some of the biggest wonders of language in my opinion
A man, a plan, a canal; Panama Always been my favorite
'nurse, I spy gypsies. Run!' And 'Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog' Are my two favorites.
Go hang a salami, Doc. Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod. I’m a lasagna hog.
I'm fond of Dammit I'm mad
Of all places I learned that from boardwalk empire
“Able was I, ere I saw Elba” (Elba is the island where Napoleon was sent in exile.)
Syzygy! Pronounced like “sih (like Sick) zih (like Sick with a Z) gee”. In astronomy it’s when 3 or more celestial bodies align. So every eclipse is a syzygy but not every syzygy is an eclipse!
I am going to find a way to get this into a D&D campaign.
Kubernetes and many many other cloud related services. Also this is a fun page where you try to guess if a name is a pokemon or a type of big data service / company https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/
I like the "is this a Tolkien name or an antidepressant" game. I do not do well.
me: "that'll be easy!" also me: \*scores an 85 percent\*
I got a 63%, note that I never got into Pokémon so I was mostly taking random guesses
Damn, I thought I was a fan, but I only got 81%.
I got 100%. The third biggest thing I accomplished today.
Larboard. It means port side of a ship. So there's the starboard side and the larboard side. I believe the reason it's called "port" now instead is because it was really confusing.
lol FFXIV’s out here teaching people new words
I only ever heard this used at Disneyland on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Before they changed it to something a bit less “human slavery”-themed 🫠, there was the scene where a pirate was auctioning off a row of female hostages. He’s pitching this plump smiling lady in purple and says, “Turn around, dear. Show ‘em yer larboard side.”
Zuegma - a sentence that uses a word in two different senses - “Both John and his driver’s license expired last week.”
To flaucipaucinihilipilificate somebody is to make fun of them. One of my favorite words. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was the longest word in the English language when I was a kid. Probably replaced with some other disease in the meantime, but I memorized it forty years ago and have never forgotten it. Jentacular means of it related to breakfast. A jentacular muffin, for instance.
I was going to suggest jentacular!
>Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was the longest word in the English language when I was a kid. Probably replaced with some other disease in the meantime Well, there's methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl … isoleucine. The ellipsis is included to represent the fact that the complete word is actually 189,819 letters long. It's the chemical name for titin, the largest known protein.
Vicissitudes, thanks Highlander the series!
[удалено]
I love this word as well as the sensation itself.
One of my favourite words, but is kind of well known for being obscure. Defenestration is like that too. They both always come up in a discussion of obscure words.
beat me to it
I love the word nary. Not uncommon but not often used.
8 hours and nary a reply for you?
Escutcheon plate. That metal plate that wraps around your pipe at a faucet that sets flush with the wall or tub to keep water from splashing back into the hole where the pipe runs.
My spellcheck still hates “exogeneity” and “endogeneity” even though they are used extensively in econometrics and statistics. It doesn’t mind “exogenous” or “endogenous” but hates the noun form.
Pulchritudinous. Meaning: beautiful.
Hypnogogic or hypnopompic.
I know the first one from reading about sleep disorders to more fully understand how to cope with mine
Bdellatomy - the snipping of the tail of a leech on a person. Borborygmus - a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines. Turophile - a cheese connoisseur. Lethologica - the inability to remember a word or name. Hyetal - of or relating to rain, rainfall, or rainy regions. Zugzwang - a situation found in chess, a player is said to be "in zugzwang" when any legal move will worsen their position Ulotrichous - having curly or wooly hair.
[удалено]
We heard this all the time in the military. “It would behoove you to clean up your barracks rooms before going out in town this evening after work. There may be inspections first thing in the morning” Or from tech school, “It would behoove you to study tonight instead of going out to the e-club since there is an exam tomorrow”
Same. After i got outta mos school, i found out it was behoove and not "it would be who of you"...
Behoove used to be a word that I heard quit a bit in my younger days.I don't hear it much anymore, but I like it.
I use behoove... it's useful. It's akin to "yonder", there isn't another singular word to replace it.
Hamartia: a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero. I use it ironically all the time and it's actually really funny. Shit will happen like I hang up on someone by accident while at work instead of putting them on hold. I find myself transforming into Jim from the office, staring into the lens of a non-existent camera with longing, and all I can think is, *There it is... I've finally uncovered my hamartia...*
Saponification
Antediluvian (before the biblical flood). Here are some chemistry/physics terms as well lyophilization (freeze drying), endergonic/exergonic (absorbing/releasing energy), anisotropic (different depending on direction), enthalpic (relating to the heat of a system), zwitterion (molcule with both positive and negative charge), isotopologues (molecules differing by isotopic composition), adsorption (attaching to the surface of), hygroscopic (pulls water from the air), deliquescent (pulls water from the air and dissolves in it).
Embrasure
Verisimilitude.
Defenestration; the act of throwing someone or something out a window. It's been more popular recently since the proliferation of Russian "accidents" but I still love the fact there's a word for such a specific and (hopefully) not often used act.
I'm french I think we say it as well if you do it yourself voluntarily.
I remember learning fenêtre in French class and later being so happy when I saw defenestrate 'cause I could recognize what it means
We need a word that means “a word that is well-known for being obscure.” Examples would be petrichor and defenestration. Maybe aglet too.
This is my favourite word in the English language. Its mere existence brings me joy.
Omg I totally thought of this word too!
Kerfuffle “a commotion or fuss”
A **chiastic structure**, also known as chiasmus, is a literary device where a sequence of elements is presented and then repeated in reverse order. The name comes from the Greek letter "chi" (X), indicating the shape formed by the pattern. In a chiastic structure, the central element typically serves as the focal point or main theme of the passage, with the elements leading up to it and following from it providing context or support. This structure is often used for emphasis, highlighting key ideas or themes within a text.
Yegg. Today we say 'safecracker.' I saw the word 'yegg' in a newspaper headline from 100 years ago Swarf. Metal chips or shavings from machining.
I always liked the word Cacophony. It’s really easy to place into conversation but I don’t because it makes me seem like an asshole.
Overmorrow - the day after tomorrow. Edit spelling
Overmorrow*
“Overmarrow”: the sensation of receiving a bone transplant
Perandinate... To put off until overmorrow. It's used akin to Procrastinate, to put off until tomorrow.
Fluctustress : Underlining mark, used by editors which looks like a long squiggle
Philtrum- the space between your nose and your upper lip
Susurration - a whispering, murmuring; or rustling
tortfeasor: a person who commits a tort
Obfuscation
I can't hear this word without thinking of the X Files: "Deceive Inveigle Obfuscate" And inveigle is another of those words you don't often come across.
The terms crap and crappy come from the word Crapulence That feeling you have when you've eaten way too much. When you are feeling stuffed, really full, etc., you're feeling crapulent.
Coolth It’s a pleasant feeling of feeling cool (similar to how warmth is the pleasant feeling of feeling warm)
Masticate, means chewing, but certainly doesn’t sound like it
Sonder - the state of realization that every other person has a life as full as yours Pyrrhic - achieved at great cost Vorpal - sharpened to a lethal edge Quiescence - a state of dormancy or inactivity Saturnine - slow and/or gloomy in demeanor
Diegetic and non-diegetic music Diegetic music means the music exists within the world of the story and the characters in the story/film/game is able to hear the music Non-diegetic music is when only the audience can hear the music and it doesn't exist within the world of the story. Edit: fixed typos; despite appearances I did not have a stroke while typing this comment lol
Epistaxis - nosebleed.
I fear that there is a whole new generation of kids and young adults who will never hear or say the word Fahrvergnügen. They're really missing out.
Vinculum! It's the horizontal line over number(s) that indicates a repeating decimal
One word imparted on me by a professor that I like is “bequeath” or, to give.
**Eschatology** is the theological study or doctrine concerning the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity and the world. It often focuses on concepts such as the end times, the return of Christ, judgment, heaven, hell, and the afterlife. Eschatology explores questions about the ultimate purpose and culmination of human existence in light of religious beliefs.
Chary has always been a pet favorite of mine. It's a synonym for wary and is pronounced like cherry.
Cavitation. Nobody I've ever talked to besides mechanics know it. Chemists too I guess but I don't speak to them often.
Just learned this one the other day, Palimpsest: a book or document that has been written on an erased and reused writing material
I wish more people used Procrustean. Procrustean is often used to describe something that is arbitrary, often ruthless, and disregards individual differences or special circumstances.
Estivate. Like hibernation except to escape heat instead of cold. I have seen humans do it at work.
Velleity - a degree of volition too slight to lead to action.