Where exactly is the cutoff date after which we're no longer allowed to learn anything new, anyway?
But I digress. Here, then, is a brief collection of some of my own favorite words and phrases, chosen more or less at random from memory. (Believe me, I could go on all day like this.) Some are very useful, some are unjustly obscure, and some are just beautifully poetic and fun to say out loud no matter what they mean. Dictionaries used and recommended here include: The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words, Depraved and Insulting English, Le Mot Juste, and The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate.
Anomie: condition of despair brought on by a breakdown in the rules of conduct and loss of sense of purpose
Argumentum ad individium: argument which appeals to men's prejudices
Contra mundum: against the world; used primarily of one who takes an unpopular position and opposes majority feeling
Gaudium certaminis: the joy of the struggle
Pons asinorum: the ass's bridge; problem inaccessible to people of limited wit
Tedium vitae: weariness with life
Au courant: up to date, well-informed
Au fait: well-versed, expert
C'est tout dire: (you have said) all there is to say
Faux dévot: one who feigns piety
Kulturschande: insult to good taste, crime against civilization
Weltschmerz: world-weariness
Penseroso: thinker, usually with a melancholic disposition
Chiromaniac: a compulsive masturbator
Coprophiliac: a sexual deviant with an abnormal interest in feces
Cumberworld: a thoroughly useless person or thing
Driveler: one who talks in an idiotic fashion
Dunderwhelp: a detestable numbskull
Entheomaniac: one who is literally insane about religion
Epicaricacy: schadenfreude
Gongoozler: a dimwit who stares at unusual things
Infandous: too odious to be spoken of
Merdivore: shit-eater
Misologist: one with a hatred of mental activity
Mysophiliac: a person who is sexually excited by filth and excretions
Peotillomania: the abnormal habit of constantly pulling at the penis
Sophomania: the delusion that one is wise
Tartuffe: religious hypocrite
Ventose: verbally flatulent; full of pomp, conceit and bombast
Anodyne: inoffensive
Aperçu: comment or brief reference that makes an illuminating or entertaining point
Ataraxy: a state of serene calmness
Benighted: state of contemptible ignorance
Cogitate: think deeply about something
Dysphoria: state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life
Ersatz: inferior substitute
Fanfaronade: arrogant or boastful talk
Farouche: sullen or shy in company
Farrago: a confused mixture
Ineffable: too great or extreme to be described in words
Insouciance: casual lack of concern; indifference
Ipse dixit: unproven or dogmatic statement
Laodicean: lukewarm or halfhearted especially with respect to religion or politics
Meretricious: apparently attractive, but in reality having no value
Perspicuous: clearly expressed and easily understood; lucid
Sequacious: lacking independence or originality of thought
Supercilious: behaving or thinking as if one is superior to others
Coruscate: 1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle. 2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.
Nepenthe: 1. A drug or drink, or the plant yielding it, mentioned by ancient writers as having the power to bring forgetfulness of sorrow or trouble. 2. Anything inducing a pleasurable sensation of forgetfulness, esp. of sorrow or trouble.
Lucifugous: Avoiding light
Kenspeckle: Conspicuous; easily seen or recognized.
Anacoluthia: Lack of grammatical sequence or coherence, esp. in a sentence
10 comments:
Sotto voce.
Malgré lui.
Volens-nolens.
Contumelious.
Harangue.
In Latin, 'supercilious' really meant "with elevated eyebrows," used to denote not high culture, as has become usual nowadays, but the mien of haughtiness affected by, well, some high-brow types.
Also: I'm rather fond of the more literary sense of 'anodyne,' used to denote lack of bite, interest or excitement: 'An anodyne speech.'
Ahh, good stuff. I swear, I actually thought about sotto voce, but I had to draw the line somewhere or I'd still be making a list.
Malgré lui, volens-nolens, contumelious -- all new to me.
Glad I could find something new for you. I learned English late, after a couple other languages, thus some of the neologisms you listed look familiar to me from elsewhere.
'Lucifugous' is Latinate for the more Grecian 'photophobe.' Like Venus to Aphrodite, as it were.
Another word I like much is 'termagant.' Socrates' Xanthippe was one, and apparently so was Galileo's mother. A pious termagant, who would drive Vincenzo crazy; much like his son, Galilei père was a laid back skeptic with little patience for frauds and fools.
Meretricious -- from meretrix, a tarted-up, gaudy courtesan or prostitute in classical Rome.
Many decades ago, Ersatz was a name-brand for a cheap German coffee-substitute (mostly ground chicory, I think) the impoverished working classes behind the Iron Curtain used to drink.
And 'ataraxy' -- the Stoic ideal of being unmoved by sorrow or joy -- comes from ancient Greek ataraxia, which in the Nineties I believe was adopted as the name of a New age band along the lines of Dead Can Dance (I saw you had that one on your playlists somewhere on this blog).
If you like words, you'll love Emile Benveniste's Vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeenes (sorry, I can't do French accents on my keypad) or the Walde-Pokorny dictionary of Indo-European roots (that one's in German). Or the Meyer-Lubke dictionary of Romance etymologies. Very good stuff.
Wow, you learned English late? If only some of my fellow lifelong speakers could be bothered to write so clearly!
I took five years of Spanish in school before promptly forgetting most of it, and I was just thinking recently that if I had to do anything differently, I would have liked to have spent more time studying language in a more serious way. Youth is so wasted on the young...
Hey! I resemble that remark!
I'm reading your comments and -- fwiw -- I'm considered to have an extensive vocab, even when I was in University. But you guys blew me away.
When I started working in the trades I consciously dropped a lot of vocab (because it's not communication if no one understands you) and it's been seriously, a decade since I kept lists of sexy new words. I thought since I aced Reader's Digest's Vocab Power article every month I was still a player. Apparently not.
Although, I still stand on principle of not using a foreign, esp. a dead language, when we have a perfectly good english term. Though i will admit to extensive usage of terms like 'savoir faire' and 'je ne sais quoi' where the english cognate is not so pretty.
Haha -- I tend to use those exotic words and phrases for things like, well, post titles. Simply for their aesthetic qualities, I guess. I've never used "nepenthe" in conversation, but when I wanted to post something about an article describing some scientists' attempts to manipulate the memories of people suffering from PTSD, well, it was just a perfect and poetic choice.
Well, thank you, kind sir. Much appreciated. Truth is, besides my love of languages, I also come from a small country of no cultural significance; as a result, to join the global dialogue, I had to learn a few major idioms first.
I had to learn how to write clearly by force of profession -- academia (but not the more corrupted part of humanities, where more obscure is thought better).
(but not the more corrupted part of humanities, where more obscure is thought better)
I've written about higher ed a few times from an outsider's perspective. I never went to college, but I take a sort of perverse enjoyment out of hearing from friends who did out of a love of language or writing, only to quit in disgust over "people in ivory towers communicating with each other in a private language," as one of them put it.
One friend went to Yale and studied under Harold Bloom (Arthur Chapin, on the blogroll), and he let me read his unfinished dissertation. It was like reading a poorly understood foreign language. I don't know that I've ever felt so clueless and left out.
Post a Comment