I voted for a snollygoster this week, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Snollygoster (“a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician”) is a word I adopted this week over at SaveTheWords.org. The web site enables people to “adopt” underused or dying words that are at risk of being dropped from the English language.
According to Savethewords, 90 percent of everything we write in English is communicated by only 7,000 words. People can browse through the Savethewords site, adopt neglected words, and pledge to promote them by using the words in everyday communication. (The site has a fun interactive display–the words actually leap at you and demand to be chosen).
As writers, we all love finding fresh and original-sounding ways to communicate. Who doesn’t want to sprinkle her prose with potent words such as mingent (discharging urine), philagyrist (someone who loves money), woundikins (a mild profanity), jobbernowl (a stupid person), or mowburnt (crops spoiled by becoming overheated)?
Once you’ve adopted a word over at Savethewords, you can order a tee shirt with your word printed on it. Maybe next election I’ll order some shirts with “Snollygoster” printed on the back and hand them out to my least-favorite candidates. Hopefully they won’t bother to look it up.
How about you? Is there a particular word you’d like to save from extinction?
Okay, I confess, when skimming most of these words I thought they ought to stay retired. But pigritude (laziness) did catch my eye. As in I wish I was retired from the day job so I could fully engage my pigritude. LOL!
Pigritude sounds beautifully like its meaning, BK! Also welmish (of a pale, sickly color). As in, I was feeling welmish from the flu.
Oh- I found two lovelies that I can use today: kexy (brittle or withered) and plegnic (a strike or a blow- like blunt force trama- to strike something with a hammer or bat or whatever….) Bonus points to kexy though because it looks cool, it has an x in it and it sound sexy.
Kexy is cool, Chaco, and I especially like plegnic. I can hear that word being used in a fight scene.
I once went to a production of The Glass Menagerie, and sat next to a rather large, borborygmic man. So borborygmic, in fact, I had trouble hearing the lines.
lambilin [act of licking or lapping] of the primifluous [that which flows first] libations resulted in an excess induced illness….yea, that’s a hangover….
Jim, that man was ready to rumble, lol. Kathy, I’m jonesing for my primifluous cup of coffee.
Great words all!
A friend of mine has a remarkably broad vocabulary and a natural facility. Once while playing one-on-one basketball with him he inhaled a bug gagging and raising an arm in a time-out saying, “Your indulgence please, while I expectorate this entomologic carcass from my airway.” After hawking up the bug, “Criminy! As populous as these pests are I may need to don my mombassa.”
As lovers of words we’ve shared the observation that a rich vocabulary is not equivalent to eloquence or effective communication. Unfortunately a word’s precision and exacting fit is meaningless when the listening party(ies) are not familiar with it.
The word saving efforts are noble and I support them. Unfortunately the words themselves are not generally useful (though fun) for general communication. Perhaps through time they will reach enough individuals to improve communication.
My contribution ‘pinguecula’. the small fleshy bump just medial to the cornea of the human eye. Varies in prominence for each individual. Love the sound of it “ping-gwe-cue-la”
I learned “borborygmus” in college, playing the Dictionary Game. Ever play that? It’s like Balderdash, only you use a big dictionary to find a word no one knows. Great game, and look how it has enhanced my life.
tjc, I agree that language can lose its effectiveness when there’s too much of a disconnect between the speaker and the audience. It’s a risk I’m usually willing to take, though! Jim, I loved playing Dictionary and learned from it. Also Scrabble.
I wanted so bad to do this yesterday I was bursting at the brain seams. But work kept interrupting me….so now without further ado
My Big-Word Story
Upon the completion of the commendaces for the avuncular indweller of the suburban habitat juxtaposed to my own, Bucky, a pamphagous and lagernious expert of ptochology, who amidst igniparous woundikins expired of complications ischemic of which no sphygmomagnometer had ascertained preparatory evidence to deduce appropriately, I found myself stepping with urgent mingentic state into the local macellarious establisment in search of hygenic facilities. The proprietor, noting my distress, waved me on to my relief. Upon disembarking from that great and heavenly journey, having expelled copious quantities of sinapistic fluid in the manner of an expedient equine, the macellary himself apprised my demeanor. The man attempted to raise his eyebrows in concern, the movement being nearly lost on his epalpebrate foreskull, being shaved smooth it rendered his head in appearance penile, were it not for the ample aggregtion of rimple ruck that defined his movements in hair’s stead. With cleaver in hand and blood crusted vestements drapered across the lintel of massive shoulders he seemed the embodiment of vengeful theonomy. He spoke, his austerulous verbage dulled in effect by the tone of the voice that rolled from his tongue in a gleimous falsetto warble that nearly flung me into a cachinnous state. Before my rudity a petite jeun femme entered the room, his wife as deduced by her amorous gaze, her youthful abdomen blistered large with profit of his seed into a form reminiscent of ligantile fungi. The thought of the physicality of their copulation delivered unto me essomenic visions vivid with Danteic imagery that peaked my odynometer. I clamped my oratious orifice before spewing verbage sans floscullation that would have proved tristificial and soloecal not wishing to intiate a pugnastication on my person in the ensuing and swiftly exited the premises.
Translation…in Alaska redneckese:
After we said a word about my neighbor, the kids called him Uncle Bucky, he was a pig of a man whose butt was wider than his shoulders and he croaked in a fit o’ cussin’ of a heart attack the sawbones didn’t see comin’, I had to take a leak. I squeezed it off and hoofed it over to the nearby butcher shop and asked to use his toilet. He said yeah and I ran in and pissed like a racehorse. It smelled like mustard. I was gonna tell the butcher thanks but when he looked up at me the dude had no eyebrows and was bald as could be. His wrinkled up head looked like my willie. He was all covered with blood and had a cleaver in his hand so I didn’t wanna laugh for fear he’d bring the wrath o’God down on me. Then he opened his mouth and out came this girly high pitched phlegmy voice that nearly sent me to cracking up. Before I burst out though this skinny young girl not half his age, his wife by the way she looked at him, comes a walking out all swelled up and pregnant with his baby, her belly all stretched and looking like one of them tree mushroom thingies, and I suddenly get this picture o’them doin’ it and that nearly fried my brain. So not having a good or polite thing to say that wouldn’t get the crap kicked outa me I slapped my pie hole shut & boogied on outa there.
ahhhh…feels good to get that out!