Just as there are some words that don’t serve any useful purpose, there are some words that you’ve probably never run into that are really useful or at least it feels quite satisfying that such a word exists because you can see the need for it.. The following list gives words that I am definitely in favor of. I’m hoping you will use them whenever the occasion arises.
1. Loganamnosis: We particularly advocate the frequent use of this word, since we suffer from this condition ourselves and we’re pretty sure that many people suffer in the same way. Loganamnosis occurs when we’re talking about something and, well, we just can’t pluck the right word out of our memory. Loganamnosis doesn’t actually mean “not being able to remember a word.” It refers to the obsession we get which has us focusing on trying to remember the damn word we couldn’t quite retrieve and stops us from giving our attention to the conversation. We may even blather on after the fashion of “what was that word, it begins with an ‘o’ I think.” We’re even likely to burst into the conversation a few minutes later and say “that’s what the word was ‘loganamnosis’.” And just in case ‘logamnosis’ really does cause logamnosis in us, there’s an easier word to remember that means something similar; onomatomania. Onomaomania is our extreme vexation of having difficulty finding the right word.
2. Nosism: You may have noticed that the description of loganamnosis read a little oddly. That’s because it was carried out in the first person plural. I was practicing nosism. Only a nosist would write in that way, because nosism is the practice of refering to oneself as “we.” This is something which Queen Victoria became famous for when she declared “we are not amused,” instead of using the more familiar “curl up and die you little toad.” There is something quite pompous about the use of the first person plural in this way, since it presumes agreement by everyone present. A word closely related to nosism is wegotism. The meaning is slightly different since wegotism refers to the excessive use of ‘we’ in writing (but not speech) . We can thus proclaim that our description of loganamnosis was both wegotistical as well as nosistical.
3. Culacino: My eyes lit up when I encountered this word, partly because I’m utterly useless with coasters. When I want to put a drink down on a surface, nothing in me says “you must get a coaster to put it on.” When I’ve put an inconvenient stain on a table surface I think “why can’t they invent surfaces that don’t stain?” But if it wasn’t for people like me, there would be no need for the word culacino. A culacino (probably pronounce culachino, because of its Italian origin) is the mark left on the table by a moist glass caused by the inability of some inconsiderate lazy ne’er-do-well that couldn’t be bothered to use a coaster.
4. Lubberland: When I die I hope to go to Lubberland, where I will surely meet other people who also leave plenty of culacinos on their tables and furniture. But in Lubberland the culacinos never form on the furniture, the dishes never pile up in the sink and the garbage put itself out to be collected. Lubberland is inhabited by the kind of people who work at the next desk to you, but send you emails because they can’t be bothered to stand up and engage you in conversation. Its inhabitants are those who spend hours driving around parking lots looking for a space close to the shop they want to visit, because walking will surely exhaust them. But in Lubberland there’s always a parking space waiting for you. Lubberlanders have remote controls for their remote controls and if they lose the remote for the remote, no worries, they have a remote for the remote for the remote. In short, Lubberland is a mythical paradise reserved for those who are lazier than a pillow tester and mean to remain so. Lubberland! where seldom is heard a discouraging word and effort has vanished away.
5. Grinogog: Should I die and find myself in Lubberland I would soon be grinning like the cat’s uncle. I would undoubtedly become a grinagog, a person who is perpetually grinning. Grinagog is, to my mind, a wonderful word, because it is almost onamatapoeic and much better than grizzledemundy, which means exactly the same but fails to telegraph the meaning.
6. Eccedentesiast: I would not become an eccedentesiast, the eccedentesiast being the opposite of a grinagog. The grinagog may be a bit of a simpleton, but he is smiling because he (or she) is somehow amused or happy. The eccedentesiast is the one faking the smile. The word was actually coined by Florence King the so called “Queen of Mean” who penned “The Misanthrope’s Corner” for the National Review in the US. She was particularly referring to those who brandish fake smiles for the television camera, which means quiz show hosts and politicians, in my experience.
7. Macrologist: Of course, if you run into a macrologist, it’s possible that you will become an eccedentesiast for the sake of politeness. A macrologist is a boring conversationalist, the kind of person who, as Henry Ford once said “opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.” This is an odd word which seems as inappropriate to its meaning as grinagog is appropriate. The origin of the word is from the Greek macrologia, which simply means a long discourse (a lot of words) with no specific implication of boredom. However, bores and long discourses are often intimate friends. The worst thing about a bore is not so much that they won’t stop talking, but that they won’t let you stop listening. They provoke you into drinking quickly so that you can escape from them in order to refill the glass. After all you can only play the eccedentesiast for so long. As George Eliot said, “blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, refrains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.æ
8. Vilipend: Thomas Aldrich noted that “the man who suspects his own tediousness has yet to be born” and yet champion bores are often vilipended, as for example one putative bore was by Herbert Tree, who commented “He is an old bore; even the grave yawns for him.” Vilipending is an art unto itself with many practitioners, but few artists. Former UK Labour Minister, Denis Healey, qualifies among the greats for his comment about Parliamentary opponent, Sir Geoffrey Howe. He remarked that, “being attacked by Sir Geoffrey is like being mauled by a dead sheep.” Mamie Van Doren crucified Warren Beatty’s ego with the words “He’s the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.” She thus achieved in a single sentence what Carly Simon took a whole song (You’re So Vain) to accomplish. Johnny Mercer, though, is the victor vilipendorum for his comment about a British West End musical; “I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics”
9. Garbist: Vilipending might be great fun if you happen to have a lively wit and a sharp tongue. But it can be a dangerous pursuit. As Richard Steele observed, “nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.” A garbist is, if nothing else, modest. The word refers to someone who is adept at engaging in polite behavior. The word seems to be a little schizophrenic because on the one hand there is garbage, which derives from Old French “jarbage” meaning a bundle of sheaves or entrails. On the other hand there is the word garb which originally meant elegance from the French garbe and the Italian garbo (making Greta Garbo’s name seem somewhat appropriate). The garbist is thus elegant in behavior.
10 Denary: You may have noticed that obscure words come in tens. There’s a reason for this; people like lists of 10. That’s why David Letterman of the Late Show regularly produces lists of “Top 10 Things”, a tradition that, bizarrely, began with The Top 10 Things that Almost Rhyme with Peas, but normally coincide with what’s in the News. In the 2008 US election, for example Letterman did “The Top Ten Questions People are Asking The John McCain Campaign”, “The Top 10 Surprising Things About Obama,” and “The Top 10 Messages on Sarah Palin’s Answering machine.” In the UK, The Sun newspaper is forever publishing lists of ten. I’m simply playing the same tune on a different instrument. 10 is, as we all know, the number of fingers on your hand and the basis of our counting system. 10 was also the Pythagorean symbol (number) for completeness because 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. The number of commandments in The Old Testament was 10, and if you want to get even more biblical, there were 10 generations between Adam and Noah and 10 horns on the Beast of Revelation. In any event, all of these things are decads (groups consisting of 10) and all these postings are denary (consisting of 10 parts). Denary postings on the web get good readership.
Also:
10 IT Words That You Don’t Know
10 Collective Nouns That You Don’t Know
10 Words You Don’t Know That Shouldn’t Exist
10 Adventurous Words You Don’t Know
10 Curse Words You Don’t Know
10 Insulting Words You Don’t Know
10 Nonsense Words You Don’t Know
10 Words You Don’t Know With Limericks
10 Units of Measure You Don’t Know
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~ Albert Einstein
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