10 Words You Don’t Know
“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” ~ Ralph W. Sockman
Some readers will surely know one or two of these 10 words. That’s just the way of the world. But most of you will not know any of them and, to be honest, you will not find them hard to forget. I’ve forgotten most of them already. (This list of ten words was randomly selected from a much longer list I keep of strange and obscure words.)
Anopisthography
This refers to the practice of writing on just one side of the paper. When I have a notebook that opens left-to-right, I’m not an anopisthographist, but when the pages are bound at the top, I convert to anopisthography immediately. I’ll bet most of you are the same. I’ll also bet that all of you suffer from Post-It® anopisthography. Only a curmudgeonly pinchpenny would fail to do so.
Quomodocunquize
Quomodocunquize is a word for recessionary times. I’m hoping it will see greater use when the next recession arrives. It means to make money by any possible means. Naturally, that includes both immoral and amoral means, but could also include ingenious means, such as making money from doing nothing more than writing about unusual words.
Jentacular
What could be more jentacular than the smell of bacon and eggs cooking on the stove and the rustle of cornflakes as you pour them into the bowl? The answer is: nothing, really, as long as you live in America or the United Kingdom. However, if you live in Scandinavia, such things are not jentacular at all — although the sight of sliced cheeses and cold meats on a plate certainly are. Jentacular means relating to breakfast.
Pigmentocracy
From the presidential perspective, 2008 saw the end of pigmentocracy in America, pigmentocracy being government by those of one skin color. To no one’s surprise, pigmentocracy tends to be the rule in most countries. The United States is now one of the few exceptions.
Squaliform
Squaliform means shaped like a shark. It’s the kind of word you don’t get to use very often, even if you know it. All sharks are, by definition, Squaliform. But not many other denizens of the deep are similarly shaped. Also, should you actually be snorkeling in shark-infested waters and see the clichéd shark fin sticking out of a wave, you’re more likely to explete “Shark!! There’s a Goddam shark!” than to announce calmly, “Why, I believe there’s something squaliform coming this way.”
Quickhatch
A quickhatch is not what it sounds like — to me at any rate — that is, a chick emerging prematurely from its egg. It’s something else entirely. Hugh Jackman portrays a human quickhatch in the X-Men movies, with one movie in the series being very specifically about Hugh Jackman’s acquisition of his quickhatchness. A quickhatch is a wolverine. Apparently, it derives from the American Indian — probably Cree — word kwiihkwahaacheew. Sounds like a sneeze to me. Think about the movie poster we could have had if this word had stayed in its original language
Gossypiboma
I love really, really specialized words and gossypiboma is a great exemplar. A gossypiboma is a surgical sponge accidentally left inside a patient’s body. It’s a surprising fact that patients occasionally leave the operating theater with a little souvenir from the surgical team. Statistics suggest that these oversights occur about 30 times per week in the U.S. and a couple of times a week in the U.K. — the disparity in frequency being attributable to the fact that Americans undergo vastly more operations per person than the British. Things left behind include swabs, clips, screws and surgical implements. Only the first on this list is actually a gossypiboma — the rest don’t warrant a word of their own.
Noxal
When people discover, to their dismay, that they are the proud owner of a gossypiboma, they are likely to regard it as a noxal distinction. As a word, noxal has, on occasion, been used to mean noxious, but the correct meaning of this adjective is a little more specialized than that: pertaining to damage or wrongful injury from an object (or possibly an animal) belonging to someone else.
Hypothecary
I’m sure you’re well aware what an apothecary is. Apothecary an alternative word for pharmacist. A hypothecary, however, is not a hyperactive pharmacist. It’s much more unexpected than that. A hypothecary is a mortgagee — someone who loans money to house buyers. Under normal circumstances, hypothecaries simply make a living by gathering interest payments on the mortgage.
In the US in 2006 and 2007, hypothecaries bundled up tranches (i.e., slices) of property loans into derivatives and sold them to banks all over the world. This created an unsustainable financial bubble. The bursting of the bubble gave rise to a stock market crash and a huge increase in unemployment.
This left many people with little option but to quomodocunquize.
Xenobombulation
I’ve got work to do right now, and I really should get on with it, but I’m xenobombulating again. Xenobombulation is the act of avoiding one’s duties, malingering, even feigning illness or pulling some stunt like writing a blog post when you really should be getting on with real work.
If you’re interested in other obscure words you don’t know, click here.
Robin Bloor is the author of Words You Don’t Know. For the record, he is also the author of The “Common Sense” of Crypto Currency, runs the website TheDataRightsofMan.com, is a founder of TurtleIslandCoin.io and a member of the advisory board for Permission.io.
