Words

created, $=dv.current().file.ctime & modified, =this.modified tags:languagewordslist

NOTE

What is the purpose of an obscure word? If you are trying to speak to someone why use something your speech partner cannot understand? If I find myself constantly reaching towards the adjective “interesting” because I mean to say precisely what is says, why just dress up the word with myriad adjacent words that say the same? Anaphora

I understand this point, but there is also nuance. Here in this collection of words, I am saving them just because they call to be placed here. They are dying. They are obscure. They are common. They are poetic. They are interesting.

From what I understand quality of generative results of speech (closeness to the truth) can be found through prioritizing “higher level language.” So using a fancy word, might be a flag that this is a more rigorous text than a passing conversation.

I don’t really concern myself with pretension, particularly with word use. If someone is being pretentious, so be it - rather than falsely attributing it and perhaps stifling some growth or a sincere attempt to connect. I remember walking around NYC after a show and this guy was talking to this girl about a book, he had read and just groaning at the showy language used. Now it seems the consequence of someone being false, which is easily discerned, isn’t that bad. Someone trying to connect via a book, is so small on the scale of horrible things, even if deceitful.

But I will reserve certain language to being written, because of how ungainly it sounds voiced.

This is a problem for me however. With certain parties I’ll not feel comfortable speaking, particularly if it is a group and I cannot cater my language to an individual (which I feel more comfortable doing, opposed to a varying group.) So what sometimes will occur is I will stumble, or my speech will come out fractured because of this process of internal self editing. This isn’t a strength either, at times I’ll doubt if the word I am using is nuanced (not leaving the wrong impression, or interpretation), or correct (meaning to say another things) - while I search for a replacement it is once again unflowing.

NOTE

Many years ago, when I was a boy on the internet, I had this list of words that I liked. I have it saved, which I’ll start this list with. I also think the months, written in English, are a wonderful collection.

favorite words (at the time):

A list of 58 words sonneteer, sabreuse, solivagant, jachelt, campestral, moonlight, intermure, sistren, brume, furtherance, haliography, quiver, noetic missive, sanctuary, veil, sayst, softly, quiescent, thyme, navigator, noctuary, sobriquet, periapt sari, jejune, minaret, harlot, sarabande, sonnet, sojourn, anisette, forsaken, isangelous, pebble requiescat, abscotchalater, paneity, pilliwinks, jerusalem, snowy, saith, fleur-de-lis december, chirplet, saltire, stravage, pari passu catacombs, inamorata, prithee prairie, obfuscate, halcyon, grove, apiary dovecote, susurrate

Foreign Words

Also not fully tapped into, words that exist in foreign languages that I don’t know which I love.

Technical Sources

• Bookbinding and Conservation of Books - A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology
  • A sampling: heat-set ink, nicked corner-The corner of the cover of a book which has the turn-in on the fore edge overlapping the turn-in at head and tail, email en resolle-A design consisting of enamel and gold inlaid in glass or rock crystal, and which has been used to a very limited extent as a means of decorating the covers of books. The technique apparently was used by only one person, a French goldsmith, who based his patterns on the engravings of Etienne Delaune. To produce the email en resolle the design is cut into the surface of the ground and then filled with strips of gold leaf. The details of the design are then modeled by very delicate chasing on the surface of the leaf. Translucent colored enamels are then floated over specified areas of the gold.

Discovered Words

Bombilate - verb. make a buzzing sound. synonyms: bombinate, buzz Poché - architectural term that is kind of obscure. I always forget this term, so I am storing it in here. It has interested me since I heard of it in a Ribbonfarm guest article. It’s the technical term for the space between walls in a floorplan, regularly uninhabitable. Some shadow overlap, shaded spaces.

What I feel with finding these words below, is a desire to share them (“oh that is poetic or useful”) and allow them to be circulated. However, 95% of this list would be met with confusion, often the first encounter with the word. It would necessitate excessive context or definition.

Dictionary of the Strange Curious and Lovely

• Aborescent - like a tree, dendritical; branching and tree shapes.
• Arcanum - a deep secret; a mystery; a secret essence.
• Argosy - a large merchant ship.
• Arrhizal - describing a plant without roots.
• Assignation - a tryst; a romantic appointment.
• Astrogate - to navigate in outer space, as a spaceship between the stars or planets.
• Aureole - a celestial crown added to the bliss of heaven as a reward for overcoming matter and the flesh; a halo; In astronomy, the luminescence shining from a celestial body, visible to the unaided eye only during an eclipse.
• Azure - clear blue color of the sky; the unclouded sky.
• Bacciferous - bearing berries.
• Bathic - pertaining to the depths, esp. of waterbodies.
• Bathos - a ridiculous descent from the sublime to the commonplace in writing or speech; an anticlimax, perhaps with humorous effect; mawkishness and sentimentality.
• Beblubber - to make swollen and disfigured by weeping.
• Beforetime - formerly.
• Belgard - a loving or amorous glance. “Vpon her eyelids many Graces sate, / Vnder the shadow of her euen browes, / Working belgards, and amorous retrate”
• Bellytimber - food, particularly nutritious food.
• Bellatrix - a star in the constellation of Orion (Latin warrior woman)
• Benedict - a newly married man who had long been a bachelor.
• Bibliotaph - one who hides away books, as in a tomb, often unread. Library Scholars
• Ballabong - a stagnant pool of water.
• Biont - any living thing.
• Bipennate - having two wings.
• Blackwork - work done by Blacksmiths.
• Bletcherous - having an ugly or disgusting design; unaesthetic.
• Blissom - to be lustful; lascivious; in heat;
• Boniface - an innkeeper.
• Bosh - empty talk [Turkish] boş - empty
• Bricolage - construction using whatever materials are at hand.
• Brume - fog, mist or vapors.
• Buss - a rude or playful kiss.
• Caesura - a natural pause in a line of verse, or conversation.
• Caliginous - dim, obscure; dark; gloomy; misty dark
• Canard - a hoax.
• Canticle - a song or chant.
• Capriform - goat-like.
• Catacoustics - a branch sciences of acoustics that deals with echoes and reflected sounds.
• Cataglottism - kissing using the tongue.
• Catbird seat - a position of power.
• Celadon - pale green.
• Celadine - a species of yellow flowered plant, often growing along old walls or garbage.
• Cenotaph - a tomb or monument honoring someone whose remains lie elsewhere.
• Cerebration - mental action of the brain, both unconscious and conscious; thinking carefully.
• Cerebrotonic - designating or resembling a type of personality which is introverted, intellectual, shy, and emotionally restrained.
• Ceres - Roman goddess of agriculture and corn.
• Cerise - a vivid purplish red.
• Champaign - flat, open country (archaic)
• Chaogenous - one who originates from chaos.
• Chatter marks - indents in wood left by errant hammer strokes.
• Chiliomb - sacrifice of one thousand oxen.
• Chirography - the art of writing with one’s own hand; the art of telling fortunes by examining On Hands.
• Claustral - of, or like a cloister.
• Cloud-bilt - fanciful; imaginary.
• Cockatrice - a serpent hatched from a cock’s egg and having the power to kill by glance.
• Coltish - lacking discipline; lively and playful.
• Complect - to embrace; interweave.
• Contrist - to sadden; fill with sorrow.
• Coxcomb - a vain, showy fellow.
• Cybernate - to control by means of a computer; especially an industrial process or automation.
• Cygnet - a young swan.
• Discerp - tear to pieces.
• Discursive - passing from one thing to another.
• Dr. Strangelove - someone who is rash and irresponsible with dangerous weapons.
• Drachenfutter - a gift offered as appeasement to a romantic partner who is upset (German, literally dragon fodder).
• Draggonade - rapid and devastating military incursion.
• Dulcinea - a mistress or sweetheart (the name of Don Quixote’s mistress).
• Eigengrau - the dark gray color human eyes see in total darkness - due to signals from the optic nerves (German, intrinsic grey) Brain Gray. Diamond Dust
• Elflock - a tangled, matted or knotted lock of human hair.
• Echopraxia - Involuntary imitations of another person’s actions.
• Enhalo - to surround something in a halo.
• Eoan - relating to dawn, eastern.
• Ephebe - a young man, especially 18-20 year old in ancient Greece.
• Ere - before; sooner than.
• Ergophobia - irrational fear or aversion to working.
• Erumpent - breaking or bursting out.
• Esbat - a gathering of witches for pleasure, for a full moon celebration, or to convene on witch business.
• Esper - a person or being with advanced mental capabilities, especially paranormal ones.
• Espirit d’escalier - the feeling one gets when thinking of things should have been said too late, after exiting the conversation. (mind on the staircase.)

From passage in Suppose A Sentence - Brian Dillon

• slumgullion - a stew, a beverage made weak or thin
• mandrelled - a usually tapered or cylindrical axle, spindle, or arbor inserted into a hole in a piece of work to support it during machining
• greaved - having greaves, leg armor
• eidetic - of memory, mental images that have unusual vividness/detail as if visible
• Soricine - shrelike
• macula - part of the eye that processes what you see
• flimmering - glimmer, flicker
• glop - a sticky amorphous substance
• exorb - perplexingly absent, perhaps relation to exorbitant
• chthonic - concerning the underworld
• brumous - foggy and wintry
• moil - hard work
• ort - a small piece of something, especially of uneaten food
• flygolding - ladybug (regional)
• chlamys - a short cloak worn in ancient Greece

From The Art of Syntax by Ellen Bryant Voigt glossary

• Caesura - a pause in the line caused by punctuation, letting syntax trump the artificial “made” rhythm of the line.
• Coupla - the suggestive synonym (from latin, a bond) for a linking verb which yokes the subject and what is asserted about it (Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts)
• Falling rhythm - a pattern of feet in which a stressed syllable is dependably followed by one or two unaccented syllabes (NOTHing conSUMES us like PROSody)
• Gerund - verb form ending in -ing used as a noun. (Dancing is not allowed.)
• Noun - the name of a person, place, thing or idea

Thought

The idea encompassing all the others is interesting here.