Galligaskins are loose breaches. A quakebuttock,
as Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words tells us, is a coward.
Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, this is The List Show,
and quakebuttock is the single greatest insult I’ve ever heard.
Today I’m sharing 50 words you’ll want to start incorporating into your vocabulary.
Some are borrowed from other languages; some have fallen out of use;
others are just obscure or made me laugh.
I’m not talking a bunch of baragouin. And it’s not mere lallation, either (and yes,
I will explain the meaning of both of those odd nouns later in the video). Let’s get started.
Bumfodder is sort of exactly what it sounds like—fodder
(or something you feed) to your bum. It was originally applied to toilet paper,
but took on a more creative usage to describe literature that was deemed worthless.
Clinchpoop is, happily, not related to bums. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a
term of contempt for one considered wanting in gentlemanly breeding.” The 16th century
publication The Institucion of a Gentleman described a clinchpoop as a man who “knoweth
no fashions.” We’re generally against cultural snobbery at Mental Floss, but next time someone
insults your outfit or your favorite author, you have my permission to call them a clinchpoop.
Another term we should be thankful is not related to the bathroom is whisterpoop. Though the Urban
Dictionary defines it as the act of defecating out of a helicopter (finally a way to describe that
near-daily occurrence) it’s more commonly known as British slang for a slight smack upside the head
or, more figuratively, the kind of realization that might make you give yourself a whisterpoop.
Sir Walter Scott used it in his series Tales of my Landlord—incredible title,
need to read t∂hat some day—and more recently it was used as the title of a book by R.J. Corgan.
A word that does belong in the bathroom is garderobe. In the late 17th century,
it came to be used as a synonym for a privy or toilet. A writer in that era
described that as the place for “the private deeds of nature,”
a euphemism that somehow sounds more obscene than just saying what those deeds are outright.
If you’ve ever gotten into a fight with a romantic partner about what to order for dinner that night,
you were likely engaging in shilly-shallying. The Oxford
English Dictionary says that shilly-shally is “To vacillate, be irresolute or undecided.”
In the category of “things that are onomatopoeias only in my own mind,” we have
loof, or the inside of a cat’s paw, according to Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary.
I can’t explain why loof sounds exactly like what it is, and I don’t think I should have to.
On the flip side, glabriety sounds, to my ear,
like it should be referring to mirthful conversation. It actually refers to baldness.
If you’re afraid of glabriety, you suffer from peladophobia.
That can include the fear of going bald or the fear of bald people.
Given some of the unsavory words that have the necro- prefix (your -philiacs,
your -mancers, your -tizing fasciitis), you might assume that you wouldn’t want
someone to call you a necrologist. If you write obituaries, though,
that’s exactly what you are. I am an indirect necrologist, in fact. If you haven’t seen the
retrobituaries on the Mental Floss website, check them out—it’s one of my favorite features we do
on the site. We posthumously celebrate some of the relatively unsung luminaries of the past,
from early 20th century snake handler Grace Olive Wiley to pioneering fighter pilot Eugene Bullard.
An aquabib is one who drinks water, rather than alcohol, while someone who is ombibulous
(a word coined by H.L. Mencken) is like an omnivore when it comes to drinking.
In other words, a person who will drink just about anything. Mencken described himself as such,
saying he was “ … prepared to admit some merit in every alcoholic beverage ever devised.”
There’s actually a liquor store in Minneapolis called Ombiblous in honor of Mencken’s coinage.
And for people with similar … interests, it’d behoove you to know some words for
large bottles of wine. There’s a bit of regional variation, but generally what we think of as a
standard bottle of wine is 750 milliliters. A bottle twice that size is known as a magnum,
which you may have heard before; depending on the type of wine,
a jeroboam can measure either 3 or 4 and a half liters. Six liters is a methuselah;
a twelve liter vessel is a Balthazar; and a 15 liter bottle is a nebuchadnezzar.
If you consume too much of a nebuchadnezzar,
you might end up talking a bunch of baragouin. That word, from the 1600s, refers to gibberish.
Here’s a couple of words that can help you navigate the choppy waters of online discourse.
An ultracrepidarian is someone who talks about a subject outside their own expertise. And when two
ultracrepidarians engage in an endless argument beneath some random celebrity’s tweet, it’s likely
that the two parties are unasinous, or “equally stupid,” literally something like “one ass.”
One or the other might also be railipotent, inclined to ranting, haranguing, or invective.
They might even have a backpfeifengesicht, which is a German word for a face that seems
to call out to be slapped or punched. We don’t condone violence at Mental Floss,
but we do heartily endorse amazing German words for otherwise-hard-to-verbalize notions.
Here’s my personal favorite such word from German: Kummerspeck.
Literally something like “grief bacon,” it refers to the weight
you might gain when going through a difficult time, like a breakup.
Uxorious: This is basically the adjective for a “wife guy,” used to describe someone
“excessively fond of or submissive to a wife,” according to Merriam-Webster.com.
And if you spend too much time on social media,
you may find yourself ramfeezled—worn out or exhausted.
That might lead to a case of matutolypea,
which is basically waking up on the wrong side of the bed. “Don’t talk to me until
I’ve had my coffee and my mautolypea has subsided” does not make for a pithy mug.
It would be difficult to fit an abecedary onto a mug at all. It can refer to the
alphabet in general, or more specifically to what’s basically a special kind of acrostic
poem in which each line or verse starts with the next letter of the alphabet.
When you’re walking around a supermarket in a foreign country,
somewhat baffled by the unrefrigerated milk and the unfamiliar packaged food mascots,
you’re experiencing a mild case of dépaysement. That French word refers to
the disorienting feeling you might experience when you’re out of your normal environment.
And if you’re staying at a hostel on that trip, you might experience lehitkalev.
It means something like to “dog it” in Hebrew—in other words,
to deal with a less-than-ideal living or travel situation.
On the other end of the spectrum we have hygge. That Danish word
refers to something like what we might call coziness in English.
The website for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark describes it as “taking
time away from the daily rush to …relax and enjoy life's quieter pleasures.”
Cafuné is a word from Brazil that refers to tenderly running your fingers through your
lover’s hair. That might be a bit harder to do if your lover’s hair is ulotrichous—wooly or curly.
And you won’t be able to do it to their chin if they’re imberbic.
That just refers to someone without a beard.
If your lover is an agelast, or someone who never laughs,
it may eventually lead to litost. That’s a Czech word that author Milan Kundera describes as
“a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”
A fairly dispiriting practice is rhinotillexomania, the excessive
and potentially pathological habit of picking one’s own nose.
The game telephone relies on otosis,
the phenomenon of mishearing or misinterpreting words that one hears.
A donkeyman is, of course, a man with the brains of a donkey. But outside of the It’s
Always Sunny in Philadelphia universe, it was used to describe the person who ran
a ship’s engine room. That came from the so-called donkey boiler or donkey engine.
That engine—usually powered by steam—wasn’t the main one driving the ship’s movement,
it was more of an auxiliary system to assist with things like loading cargo or raising sails.
Cephalomancy involves a donkeyman of a different sort. It’s a method
of “telling the future” or otherwise supernaturally divining information
using a donkey’s head. The head was basically cooked and the movement
and noises of its bones were interpreted to intuit secrets of the universe. Obviously.
If I was around for one of those cephalomancy sessions, I’d probably
absquatulate, or leave abruptly. If you want to unnecessarily fancy
up some quotidian terms, here’s a couple for you. Instead of belching or burping,
you can discuss eructation. And when a baby is incorrectly mimicking speech,
instead of calling it baby talk you can call it lallation.
Someone whose house burned down is an ucalegon. Personally,
if I went through that kind of trauma and someone broke out that word on me,
I would find it horrigust. That blend of horrible and disgusting was coined by Roald Dahl.
Still, it wouldn’t be appropriate to fustigate them, at least not literally. That word can
figuratively refer to criticizing someone harshly, or literally to hitting someone with a club.
When my Scrabble opponent plays five overlapping two letter words at once and outscores my 6
letter beauty, I want to fustigate them. One example of a less-common two-letter word which
is acceptable in the game? Aa, which is a type of lava with a broken, jagged surface. That’s
opposed to pahoehoe, another word from Hawaii, which describes a smooth, undulating lava flow.
Here are some words that hit close to home, for me.
An ailurophile is a cat lover. A gutling is a great eater, or a glutton.
What are you trying to say, Jon?
I mean, you're not wrong. And if you’re gluttonous specifically
with omelets, you’re sort of engaging in oophagy, or, literally, egg-eating. The term generally is
used to refer to a specific process in which “ … the developing embryos of some sharks eat
their ‘potential siblings’ while still in their mother’s uterus,” as the Australian Museum says,
but that’s not going to stop me from complimenting people in the diner on their oophagy.
Drop your favorite word in the comments below—no definitions allowed! We’ll go
through and try to guess the definition, to the best of our ability. Thanks for watching!