Weird Words
Alright, “weird” isn’t my word: it’s Google’s word. When I typed in the word “words” on Google, I wanted to see what optional searches were given precedence. Sure enough, “weird words” was one of the top suggestions by Google. Soon enough, that one simple search engine click set me off on a word adventure through the internet.
I was interested in what people would consider “weird words”. Were these words with strange meanings? Did they have odd spellings? Were they nonsense words? Foreign words?
Your guess was as good as mine.
It seems there are a number of different answers to those questions, depending on the most-trafficked sites for the term “weird words” on Googles. Let’s give a review of these sites, and in doing so, discover all kinds of weird words.
World Wide Words
WorldWideWords offers the most concise alphabetical word listings with a couple of dozen or more words per letter. Some of these words aren’t what I would consider weird at all, such as the words “abigail”, “bankrupt” and “cyborg”. “Cheapskate” doesn’t seem so strange to me.
I’m familiar with the word “bloviate”, but only because I’ve unfortunately heard Bill O’Reilly use the word way too much. But enough about that mess.
Most of the words on “World Wide Words” fit the profile of weird words, though. “Absquatulate”, an American word from the 1830’s that means “to make off” or “abscond”, certainly can be described as weird. “Bathykolpian” is described as meaning “deep-bossomed”, as in cleavage, and it comes from an 1858 piece by Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Sardoodledom” is a ‘play with an overly contrived or melodramatic plot’, named after the French playwright Victorien Sardou. I actually knew this word, because of Kennyi Aouad’s famous reaction (in our little word community) to it in the 2007 National Spelling Bee.
So World Wide Words, written by Michael Quinion, actually follows through on the advertisement.
After looking through the list of weird words, I decided to come up with my favorite list of weird words, courtesy of WorldWide Words. I’ve chosen acccording to a combination funny-sounding words with interesting definitions. Here’s the top ten.
Top 10 Weird Words of the Day
1. Astrobleme – An eroded meteor impact crater. The word literally means “star wound”.
2. Dumbledore – A type of bee. No, Dumbledore was not invented by J.K. Rowling, though she’s likely to sue this plagiaristic sect of bees for copyright infringement.
3. Jaculation – The Act of throwing or hurling. The word started in 1610 and was still being used when Dickens wrote, as he used “jaculation” in Bleak House. Of course, you know as well as I what you were thinking when you saw this word.
4. Vomitorium – An access passage in a Roman theatre. Michael Quinion writes that a theatre chairman he knew of used to use this word among his theatre’s patrons, to their confused disgust. That makes me laugh, because I like someone with a sense of humor.
5. Chiliastic – Relating to, or believing in, Christian millenarianism. That is, that Christ will reign on this Earth for 1,000 years – usually after the Second Coming. I’ll be completely honest and I’m not joking: I thought it was going to have some to do with eating a really good bowl of chili.
6. Makebate – A person who creates contention or strife. Well, there are certainly synonyms out there for this word (troll, ahole), but it’s the nicest sounding one. While “makebate” isn’t as funny sounding as astrobleme, I wanted you to have this word for the next time you encounter this type of person.
7. Rhinotillexomania – Habitual or obsessive nose-picking. This one may be cheating, since it wasn’t invented until 1994 or 1995, though the latin usage gives rhinotillexomania the respectability it needs to make such a list.
8. Ergophobia – Fear of Work. No joke, a British medical doctor coined the term in 1905 to describe people who literally have a fear of work. I think we’ve all met people suffering from this terrible affliction.
9. Octothorpe – Another name for the telephone handset symbol #. Yes, it means “the pound sign” or “the pound key”. Apparently, Bell Labs invented the term at one time, though other variations are octothorn, octalthorp, octatherp and octothorp. I think the right version won out in the end, though I guess “pound sign” gets to the point quicker.
10. Gargalesis - Forceful tickling. Apparently, this is contrasted against “knismesis”, which is light tickling, such as by a feather. Apparently, the terms originate in an 1897 academic article, and don’t exist in most dictionaries.
Okay, that list sounded cruder than I imagined it would be, though it wasn’t nearly as crude as it sounded. I guess I must be in a course mood today, because I usually don’t like that kind of humor at all.
Oh, well. Language was invented for crude humor, too.
Enjoy!
whoever is writing this (I am reading July 29th 2009 words) is hilarious. I think I remembered the definitions of most because of the writings !!
No kidding on the dumbledore-she would sue and I know a few hundred with ergophobia-another excuse for those an actual scientific phobia.