Need a copywriter? Contact me now! WEIRDS: odd, unusual, interesting and weird words.
Please add to this list (click here) anything that's caught your eye - but keep it clean... Let's have fun with it! I found a lot of these in the Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words, which is a fascinating book. Others are Scottish (from the Scottish Pocket Dictionary) or English dialect words.
FYI: if you know a word, but don't have a dictionary to hand, you can get a definition by typing "define: [your word]" (without brackets or quote marks) in the search bar of Google. But you won't find all of these there...
Adfenestrate: to enter by a window; conversely Defenestrate is to exit (or be ejected) via a window
Agley, aglee: off the straight, wrong, awry
Agon: a public celebration with competitions and games
Agonal: the agony of death
Airt: direction, way, point of the compass
Aleatory: random - used e.g. in avant-garde music where players are improvising around a motif
Amaranthine: unfading (the flower Amarantus doesn't fade as it dies)
Ambles (or Umbles): deer guts
Ambsace: double one (e.g. in dice) or snakeyes - ambo is Latin for "both"
Anabatic: an upward movement or increase
Anchylosis (or Ankylosis): a stiffening of part of the body, often at an odd angle
Anent: opposite, alongside, concerning
Antinomy: a paradox - literally "against the law" )
Antimony: the element stibium ) easily confused, these three!
Antonym: opposite (and opposite of synonym) )
Apterous: wingless - from Apterix: wingless bird
Argie-bargie: (g as in "argue") a quarrel or argument, or haggling
Ashet: large serving plate (like so many Scots words it may come from the French, here assiette)
Attercap: a spider, or a spiteful person
Auld Reekie: Edinburgh. The reek refers not to a stink, but to smoke (q.v. lang may yer lum reek)
Auriferous: gold-bearing
Auscultate: to listen to interior sounds e.g. with a stethoscope.
Autochthonous (or Autochthonic): native, [ab]original, indigenous, formed where it is now found
Axillary: to do with the armpit
Bahookie (or behouchie): Scots for backside
Balbutiate: to stammer or stutter (balbutiating is the adjective)
Bathycolpous: deep-chested or heavy-bosomed
Bathysiderodromophobia: fear of undergrounds/subways/metros
Batrachian: to do with frogs
Bawbees: money (a bawbee was a halfpenny, or six Scots pennies)
Baxter: a baker
Beneplacit: a gift (a "good pleasure")
Bidie-in: a person who lives with someone of the opposite sex without marriage
Bing: a heap, pile or slag-heap
Bint: slang (UK) for a girl or woman. Comes from Arabic.
Bisom: Scots term of contempt for a person (usually a woman)
Blether: talk nonsense or too much. Blethers: foolish or boasting talk
Bodacious: complete, thorough (a combination of bold and audacious)
Boke or bowk: to belch or retch
Bonspiel: a curling match
Bothy: a rough hut used by shepherds, mountaineers, fishermen or farm workers
Braw: fine, well-dressed, excellent; a large sum of money, as in "a braw penny"
Breeks: trousers, underpants or breeches
Brummagem [ware]: originally from "Birmingham", now means cheap, tacky stuff from anywhere
Burglarious: surreptitious, like a burglar
Burke: (from Burke and Hare, early C19th Edinburgh murderers) to kill by suffocation or
strangulation
But and ben: the but is the kitchen and the ben the living room of a two-room cottage
Saltchuck: British Columbia, Canada, term for salt water (sea or estuary, not gargling).
Collective nouns
* Crows: a murder
* Peacocks: a cluster, muster or (my favourite) an ostentation
Phobias:
* Agoraphobia - fear of open spaces
* Aibophobia - fear of palindromes (try reading it backwards)
* Arachnophobia - fear of spiders
* Claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces
* Didaskaleinophobia - fear of going to school
* Enochlophobia - fear of crowds
* Iatrophobia - fear of doctors
* Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: the fear of long words!
* Paraskavedekatriaphobia - fear of Friday the 13th
* Phasmophobia - fear of ghosts
* Pteronophobia - fear of being tickled with feathers
* Spheksophobia - fear of wasps
More later...