List of Great or Exotic Words

[alaskamatt17]

I've been doing a lot of reading lately and noticing that most successful authors have vocabularies that beat mine in every dimension. I try to write down the words I see that I'm not familiar with, but it's beyond that: not only do they use unfamiliar words, they use words that I know but don't think to use when I'm writing.

To combat the problem, I'm making a list of words and definitions to try to incorporate into my writing; many of them may be familiar to you, some are even familiar to me. What matters is that the word packs a punch, holds power over the imagination. I'll try to post as often as I can, and anyone can feel free to add their own words to the list.

Here goes for the first entry:

epiphytic -- relying on something else for structural, but not nutritional support

suppurations -- pockets of pus

agglutinate -- to cause to adhere, as with glue; to cause blood to clot

execration -- a curse

flue -- a conduit to carry off smoke

hirsute -- hairy

irascible -- prone to outbursts of anger

argent -- silvery

aspersion -- damaging remark

abnegate -- to deny oneself

efficacious -- capable of producing a desired effect

trenchant -- forceful, cutting

solipsist -- one who believes they alone are real

corpulent -- excessively fat

perspicacious -- mentally discerning

excoriate -- to tear or wear off skin; to abrade

angiosperm -- a flowering plant

inculcate -- to teach by repetition

sepulchral -- reminiscent of funerals

contrail -- the streak of condensed water vapor or ice crystals that follows an aircraft

avocation -- a hobby

attenuate -- to shrink

coruscate -- to glitter or sparkle

I'll have more later, and I encourage other people to provide words of their own. All of these were found in books I have read in the past year, many of which have been bestsellers of award winners.

[Richard]

thesarus -- to make something sound more intelligent than it is by adding a million syllables.

[Hang of Thursdays]

I like the word "apoplectic" myself, mainly because it describes a situation I frequently find myself in, and because it reminds me of Popes. Everytime I use it I imagine a Pope -- in the requisite pope-hat -- jumping up and down, yelling and screaming. It's a funny mental image but I'll grant that not everyone is as easily amused as I.

I'm also fond of arboreal -- relating to a tree/living in trees; and its adverb form, arboreally, which I guess means to do something in an arboreal fashion, but I can't think of a single logical sentence that could incorporate that word.

Didn't stop me from making an email address out of it.

[gp101]

Big words, or words that force you to reach for the Webster's, don't necessarily make for great writing, especially in commercial fiction IMHO. Too much of it makes the writing sound pretentious, like the writer wants to show off his expanded vocabulary. And the uncommonly used word thrown in the wrong place could make the writer look ridiculous, as in the narrator or the particular character POV has been pretty average in language usuage for chapters and chapters, then all of a sudden we get a Scrabble-winning nugget out of nowhere. I say use them sparingly if you must use them at all.

That said, there are some literary novels and short stories that just ooze of uncommonly used words and that seems to satisfy the literati crowd and the high-brow critics. As always, know your genre and whom you're writing for.

Now, the common word used in an uncommon way; that's a treat to read.

[loquax]

Monkeys live arboreally.

[Hang of Thursdays]

Monkeys live arboreally.

Hmph.

Never mind.

Though, every time I see an adverb, i think of those dreaded dialogue tags "I hate you!" Jim said angrily. Let me rephrase what I said above: I have a hard but very fun time coming up with a line of dialogue that would fit "he said arboreally."

Now THERE'S a brain teaser.

(tired.)

[brokenfingers]

Sounds like you're reading Stephen R. Donaldson.

I have a pretty good vocabulary but his latest book had me dog-earing my dictionary...

[NeuroFizz]

Does anyone want a reader to put down the book to consult a dictionary? The most useful uncommon words are those a reader can decipher from the context, and the best are the ones that give the writing a rhythm or resonance that rises above the that of the common word. That's why I slather peanut butter on my bagel at lunchtime. Some would argue that rhythm/resonance is the second best reason for using uncommon words--the first is to avoid repetition. Some would reverse the order.

[loquax]

"Get me out of this damn tree," he shouted arboreally.

Perhaps being in a tree affects your tone of speech.

[JANE007]

If I am unhappy with a word i've chosen I consult a thesarus to change it, however I wouldn't want to alienate readers with obscure words that make them scratch their heads wondering about the definition.

JMHO

[kikazaru]

I must say I hate it when I'm into a story and the author throws a word in that I haven't a clue what it means and worse - haven't a clue how it's pronounced. The mental stumble it causes, throws me right off the plot while I ponder it's meaning and silently try out the variety of possible intonations. "Silent e, emphasis on the second syllable?" "Long e?" It will bug me til I look it up, which means finding and digging out my dictionary. This is a bad thing for writers because if he has a lot of readers like me who like to immerse themselves for long periods of time in a book, too many unnecessary interruptions increases the chances that I will put the book down for good - and guaranteeing that I won't read anything else by that author in the future.

[StoryG27]

I just about kieled over when I saw the word 'solipsist' followed by the definition.

I knew (know) a person with this, but I never knew it was an actual mental problem or that there was a name for thinking oneself was the only real thing that existed. I have to tell you, this spurred an Internet research frenzy on my part and I've been learning a lot about solipsism, and it is very interesting and helpful. It's really painful to care for a person who doubts that you even exist once they can't see you anymore; it makes them a colder and much less compassionate.

So anyway, I just wanted to thank you Alaskamatt17 for helping me learn about this. I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but thanks anyway!!!

[inexperiencedinker]

Does anyone want a reader to put down the book to consult a dictionary? The most useful uncommon words are those a reader can decipher from the context, and the best are the ones that give the writing a rhythm or resonance that rises above the that of the common word. That's why I slather peanut butter on my bagel at lunchtime. Some would argue that rhythm/resonance is the second best reason for using uncommon words--the first is to avoid repetition. Some would reverse the order.

Get out of my head Neurofizz!!
I was thinking the same thing as I read through this thread. I enjoy learning new words if I can glean the meaning from the situation or narration in the book. I won't look a word up in the dictionary, I will just skip to the next sentence and ignore it. If it was important, well then I missed it!
I took Latin in high school which has helped me immensley in figuring out what a word means, and I have always read far above my formal education level. This has created a definite problem with my writing voice vs. my speaking voice. I have had friends and employers accuse me of plagiarizing work due to it's advanced vocabulary. Who can blame them when I speak like a caveman (sorry Geico) and write like a professor? I am scared to death to try to pronounce any of the heavy hitters in my vocabulary arsenal. I'll sound like a looser. "Maw-caw-bee?" "May-cay-bray?" "May-cawbra?" "May-cra-bay?" Who the aych ee double hockey sticks knows how to say MACABRE?
One classic example is Tad Williams. He had me confused due to plot, characters, and this insanely huge vocabulary that made me want to cry. I did use a dictionary on that one.
D*mn you Tad Williams....D*MN YOU!!
-----
I need coffee now...my head hurts

[AnneMarble]

Sounds like you're reading Stephen R. Donaldson.
:ROFL:

I wish I had that link to a site where someone took passage from Donaldson's first fantasy novel and tore apart the writing, even pointing out that he misused some of the exotic words he likes. :) I enjoyed Lord Foul's Bane, but I also had to hold my brain back from trying to go back to the story I was writing at that time and make it sound more "Donaldsonian." Reading authors with a very distinctive style can be dangerous to your own writing if you're not careful.

Now, I don't agree with those writers who say that you should throw away or lock away your thesaurus before writing, but you should use it (and obscure words) with care. Don't make it hard on your readers. Most of them just want to be entertained. They don't want to feel as if they're taking a vocabulary test.

[kikazaru]

"Maw-caw-bee?" "May-cay-bray?" "May-cawbra?" "May-cra-bay?" Who the aych ee double hockey sticks knows how to say MACABRE?"

Hee! There are a few words that give me pause and these 2 come to mind - the British spelling of "draft" is "draught" and in my head I would pronounce it to rhyme with "caught" - a "draughty" hall sounded ever so much breezier and colder than a mere "drafty" hall. Then there is "crudite" which sounded crispier and all together tastier if it was pronounced "crude-ite" rather than the frou frou sounding "crude-i-tay." I do remember each time I used them the way I thought they should be pronounced, and the puzzled looks I recieved. I can only thank my lucky stars I didn't have the opportunity to tell people to "come out of the draughty hall and help themselves to the crudites on the table..." or I may never have opened my mouth in public again...

[Marcusthefish]

Speaking of SF, Gene Wolfe is the king of archaic (but real) words. His New Sun books inspired one of his fans to create a dictionary, the Lexicon Urthus.

I tend to stay away from the big latinate words, myself, but I've always liked "defenestrate," which means to throw out a window.

MTF

[inexperiencedinker]

Then there is "crudite" which sounded crispier and all together tastier if it was pronounced "crude-ite" rather than the frou frou sounding "crude-i-tay."

I'm sorry, are telling me it ISN'T crude-ite???? I am telling you, I must sound like monkey when I speak!

I blame it on the french...all there words mess me up, and everyone mispronounces EASY words to sound more "frou-frou" How about we band together and demand a phonetic language! Hooray 4 fow-net-iks!

[loquax]

How do you yanks spell the British "draft" then? As in "first draft"?

Don't tell me; drapht.

[alaskamatt17]

Everyone lately has been accusing me of reading too much Donaldson, but I've never read one of his books! I own one (got it in a box with some other books), but it's the sixth in a series so I never bothered reading it.

The words I listed above came mostly from Alan Dean Foster, Robert J. Sawyer, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Isaac Asimov. Also a few from Stephen King. I did have to use a dictionary to find definitions, but I promise I don't rely on a thesaurus while writing. I only use words that I have in my vocabulary ahead of time, which makes it useful to expand my vocabulary when I'm not writing. The only way I do this is by making notes when I come across unknown words in a book I'm reading. I don't get these by dictionary browsing.

Here are some more:

catharsis -- cleansing of emotions; purgation of the digestive system

consistory -- a council; tribunal

ligature -- a cord, wire, or bandage used for tying

occlude -- to cause to become closed; obstruct

galvanic -- having the effect of an electric shock

indolent -- habitually lazy

martinet -- rigid military disciplinarian; one who demands absolute adherence to rules

enervate -- to weaken, debilitate



To mix things up a little, here are some words from non-fiction, peer reviewed journals:

putative -- generally regarded as such; supposed

albedo -- the fraction of incident electromagnetic radiation reflected by a surface, especially of a celestial body

latent -- present or potential, but not evident or active

induration -- the quality or condition of being hardened

lacustrine -- of or relating to lakes

riparian -- relating to the banks of a natural course of water

comminute -- to powderize

graben -- a usually elongated depression between two geologic faults

neritic -- of or relating to the region of the sea over the continental shelf which is less than 200 meters deep

[circusrunaway]

When I was in middle school, there were a bunch of words that I'd get a kick out of using in essays whenever I could. One of them was perspicacity, and it made me giggle still when I saw 'perspicacious' on the list here.

Another favorite was the word 'crepuscular'-- or active at twilight. In fact, I don't think I've had a reason to use that word since middle school and I wrote an essay on nocturnal animals so that I could sneak it in.

[alaskamatt17]

Crepuscular is a good one; I used it in my last novel, and I've seen it used in two other books.

[alaskamatt17]

One classic example is Tad Williams. He had me confused due to plot, characters, and this insanely huge vocabulary that made me want to cry. I did use a dictionary on that one.
D*mn you Tad Williams....D*MN YOU!!
-----
I need coffee now...my head hurts

Tad Williams is a really good writer. Which books of his did you read? I liked the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, but Otherland was good, too.

[katiemac]

I don't know why you would choose "angiosperm" unless your character is a bio professor in the middle of lecture.

Would you rather read: "It was a beautiful flowering plant," or "It was a beautiful angiosperm"? The latter conjures up images of anything but beautiful, IMO.

[alaskamatt17]

Many of these words are scientific, because many of them come from science fiction (my reading preferences influence the words I came into contact with). I believe it was a biologist that said "angiosperm" in the book I read. I found it useful because one of my characters in my WIP is a biologist, and, while she probably wouldn't say, "Look at that beautiful angiosperm!" she might jot down some notes on the plant, which might very well include the word "angiosperm."

[Jewel101]

If I am unhappy with a word i've chosen I consult a thesarus to change it, however I wouldn't want to alienate readers with obscure words that make them scratch their heads wondering about the definition.

ditto

[dblteam]

I suspect it's just as bad for a writer to dumb down their vocabulary as it is to force the use of "big" words.

I'd say two-thirds of the words on Alaskamatt's fiction lists are words I consider part of my vocabulary, meaning I could use them correctly on the spur of the moment. Most of the others I'd heard of, but couldn't have used correctly if someone had said, "use <blank> in a sentence".

So I would use those words (my 2/3 of the list) in my writing without a second thought, and I don't think readers would be turned off by the vocabulary. (We'll leave whether they'd be turned off by the writing to a different discussion :) ) I hope no one would feel compelled to pick up a dictionary (unless they like that kind of thing), but I don't think I, as a writer, ought to be overly concerned with the audience's vocabulary. After all, I learned my vocabulary from reading because most of the books I read had a few words in them that I didn't know. Using those words in my own writing helps perpetuate the process.

Valerie

Oh, and my favorite word is "esoteric". Followed closely by "synergy".

[inexperiencedinker]

Tad Williams is a really good writer. Which books of his did you read? I liked the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, but Otherland was good, too.

It was otherworld. I think trying to keep the world alive (which was technologically advanced) the insanely smart characters, and the BIG descriptive words just became too much for me. I whole heartedly agree with using a word that has better meaning and depth...shuffle instead if walk....that kind of thing, but his felt too forced and too often for me. Periodically, 'walks' works just fine for me!

[Mistook]

Macabre is pronounced like Ma-kob' (like bob) or Ma-kob'-ra (like candelabra) either one is right, but I use the first way. I remeber hearing that word on TV a lot when I was a kid. "Family Classics presents the macabre tale of..."


Here are the other ones mentioned so far that are in my vocabulary, and how they got there.


arboreal (arbor day, I live near an arboretum)

aspersion (to "cast aspersions" - that's a common enough cliche')

attenuate (mixing board term - every knob is an attenuator - I was in a few rock bands)

catharsis (fairly common psycho-babble term)

contrail (buzzword from the 60's, often used by my dad)

corpulent (don't know how that got into my vocabulary)

flue (mary poppins and any other movie with a fireplace in it)

irascible (grade school vocab word - liked the sound of it)

latent (also overused in psycho-babble - my aunt is an armchair psychologist BTW)

ligature (CSI / Law & Order word)

putative (Must've listened to too much NPR when I picked that one up!)

[Mistook]

There are some words I'll never remember the meaning of no matter how many times I hear them because they just don't sound like what they mean.
"enervated" is one of those. It sound like you're full of energy, but it means the opposite. "Lugubrious" is another one. It sounds like you're all giddy and happy, but it means just the opposite.

"I feel quite enervated and lugubrious! Let's go for a bike ride!"

[Albedo of Zero]

albedo -- the fraction of incident electromagnetic radiation reflected by a surface, especially of a celestial body




hey! i resemble that!

[alaskamatt17]

Lugubrious should have been on my list! I just read that word in Foundation and Empire a week or so ago. I guess I forgot to add it.

[alaskamatt17]

I just saw this word in a post by another AW member, and I know it's outside my usage vocabulary, so I thought I'd add it.

torrid -- intensely hot; passionate; parched by the sun; scorching; hurried/rapid

Seems like a good word to me.

[Mistook]

I just saw this word in a post by another AW member, and I know it's outside my usage vocabulary, so I thought I'd add it.

torrid -- intensely hot; passionate; parched by the sun; scorching; hurried/rapid

Seems like a good word to me.


That's another one that's most often heard in the hackneyed phrase, "Torrid love affair."

[Enigma]

Hi! I normally reside next door, in the screen writer's cell block, but thought I'd look in on you guys before they find me and take me back.

As a reporter, I've interviewed several authors and noticed that they don't speak the way they write, meaning they, excluding Wm. Buckley and that crowd, don't use "big" words. Kind of makes me think most of 'em use a thesaurus - a lot.

[britwrit]

esprit d'escalier - "the spirit of the stairs" - Not directly translatable but it roughly means the regret you feel after missing the opportunity for a perfect retort or when you come up with it an hour too late.

réchauffé - warmed over leftovers, often meant in the sense of reworked literary material

[Sharon Mock]

Lacustrine made it into my onomasticon (book of names -- in my case, an Excel database). I doubt I'd ever use it as an actual word, but it goes so well with words like argiope and chalcedony and girasol that could be used, in the proper context, as character names. (I have a whole class of names like this in my WIP.)

I have a list of "found words" in there as well -- words that are too good not to remember, even if I never find a purpose for them. It's still short:

barleychild -- a baby born less than six months after marriage
labefaction -- decline in public morality and social order
scabland -- tract of high, rocky land with no topsoil and dry streambeds
solfatara -- level area surrounding volcano emitting vapors

Mmmmm. Words.

[alaskamatt17]

Words really are our most basic of tools. I can never resist adding a new word to my vocabulary. You never know when it might come in handy.

[Steve 211]

I used to make a mark in the dictionary by words I looked up, and if I had to look it up twice, I'd write out the definition. Then I'd make sentences out of the words, to help remember them. Like, "The hirsuite barleychild with the irascible bole caused labefaction in the corpulent albedo."

I had a stack of these pages half an inch thick, and in the end I threw them all out. Why? 'Cause I could never remember them all, they made me sound like someone else, and they choked up my writing like dead leaves on a sewer grate.

Also, I started Frederick Exley's "A Fan's Notes," once, and it was a great novel, real funny, but I couldn't get past the third chapter because he used four or five huge words a page. It was like eating a crabmeat sandwich and finding a piece of shell every other bite.

Some words, though, are good just to know. Like ubiquitous (appearing everywhere), or your enervate - there's a funny scene in Streisand's "The Owl and the Pussycat" with a writer and her discussing that word. "It doesn't mean what you think it does!"

So I'm with GP: "The common word used in an uncommon way; that's a treat to read."

And by the way, GP, "a Scrabble-winning nugget out of nowhere" ? Someone's gotta use that in a story: He came into town, a Scrabble-winning nugget out of nowhere...

[Kallahan]

Had a friend of mine who wanted me to review his poem, to me it looked like he went through a thusarous just looking for the most complex and obscure words possible. I told him his poem was terrible and he needed to lighten his diction. He responed "I'm trying to convey and idea!", I told him his words were failing miserably at that. How can you convey a thought or idea with words nobody understands?

[BlueTexas]

Honestly, I love to come across new words in a novel, as long as they are well suited enough to the context I can keep reading. I'll look it up later, but context is key here.

There is a limit. Some of those words in the first post sound like the author was pontificating purely to be a flexer-of-the-word muscle.

Lugubrious is one of my favorite funny-tasting words.

I love common words in uncommon ways. Wicked by Gregory Macguire did that several times.

[reph]

U.S. usage for loquax: The American Heritage Dictionary gives the spelling "draft" for all uses (air current, military conscription – everything) and lists "draught" as a variant, "chiefly Brit." The board game, however, is draughts, but we usually call it checkers.

Despite the dictionary, it seems natural to me to use the spelling "draught" for just two senses: noun, a swallow of beer; adjective, identifying a horse used for drayage.

__________________________________________

It's not a wasteland. It's arboreally challenged real estate.

[Mistook]

Not that I'm a fan of putting big words into narrative fiction (I try to keep it pretty basic) but I do wonder what's going to happen to all these words if nobody uses them.

I used to have more time to listen to NPR during the day, and I recall some of these talk show guests were just shamelessly going out of their way to phrase things in the most obscure terms. On the one hand, I was impressed, because they always used the thesaurus words flawlessly - always the right shade of meaning, and never too many strung together.

But on the other hand I felt a real sense of disgust, knowing the guy could've put it so much more plainly and simply. Obviously these people were trying to keep up some kind of barrier to ward off the common folk from listening in.

But why should that even be possible? Words are one of the few things in the world that are truly free. How have they become the significator of expensive educations? I'm positive that my gramma had twice my vocabulary, and though she was an english teacher, she wasn't Ivy League by any stretch. She was just a poor daughter of an Irish immigrant.

I guess I have her influence to thank for the fact that I can decipher most of what I hear on NPR - even though I never made it through community college. Big words were flying all over the house when I was a kid. To a great extent, I've had to "learn" to dumb down my speech and writing to a level that's considered "normal" and even these days, when normal is second nature, I still get called out once in a while as being some kind of school-head.

It's just strange to me. Why are we losing these words?

[Steve 211]

Speaking arboreally, I was reading today a bit by a British environmentalist about how when he was a kid he'd be out climbing trees all day. Towards the end of the essay he wrote, "I've been a committed dendrophile ever since."

This was a great use of a big word because you know what it means from context, and it's used in a humorous way.

I remember another book, though, that started off saying that the main character was "a noctumbulist gamin." I had to get out of the chair, grab a dictionary, look them up, and wonder why the heck he didn't just say, "He was a sleepwalking street kid."

[scarletpeaches]

Maybe people who use 'big' words in fiction do so because they know the meaning and assume the reader does too,? Instead of saying the author was showing off or warding off the less intelligent reader, it would be better to look up the definition of the word and use it as an opportunity to increase your own vocabulary. I already knew the meanings of a lot of the words already mentioned, in fact, use them in speech and writing quite a lot and I wouldn't 'dumb down' my vocabulary to suit the reader, just as I wouldn't beef it up with certain words, just as dblteam said. It all depends on context. Those 'big' words exist because there is a need for them. Sometimes arboreal works better than tree-like or saying a creature lives in trees. There seems to be a kind of reverse snobbery to using 'big' (i.e. unknown to the reader) words. Just because a few people don't know the definition, is no reason to dumb down your writing. It would be an insult to most readers' intelligence to stick to monosyllabic words.

[SJB]

Hear, hear, scarletpeaches!

Much as I love Hemingway, I was ever a Faulkner girl. Readers should delight in ten-dollar words. If they're afraid of nicely nuanced writing, they can stick to "The Da Vinci Code," and welcome.

[Mike Martyn]

What about the joy of regional slang? "Scokum" is a wonderful North West coast term from one of the old aboriginal trade languages that made its way into local English. It means very good.


Example: "Pretty scokum rig for a gypo outfit like this!" (one logger talking to another)

Translation: Your logging truck is way too fancy for this two bit logging company.

[alaskamatt17]

Regional words are great, too. They help add realism to your setting, and they're usually easy enough to figure out in context, expecially if they're used multiple times.

I used the word visquene in one of my stories and was surprised to find that it wasn't in the MS Word dictionary. I looked online, and it wasn't in the www.dictionary.com index either. I finally found in a dictionary of uncommon words by searching google, but I hear people use the word all the time here in Alaska (it's the name of those thick plastic sheets they use to cover pallets for shipping).

[scarletpeaches]

I had a Canadian and an English friend for dinner last night (not in the Hannibal Lecter sense) and had fun teaching them Scottish slang..!

[Mike Martyn]

I had a Canadian and an English friend for dinner last night (not in the Hannibal Lecter sense) and had fun teaching them Scottish slang..!


Lang may your lum reek!

[scarletpeaches]

It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht!

I also explained the meanings of Jack (or Jill) the biscuit, 'minger', 'honking' and 'bogging'. A good time was had by all, and they like my spaghetti Bolognese too.:D

[TheIT]

Fiftieth post, yay!!!


One has to be careful with regional slang because the meaning might vary in different regions. For example, in Illinois one shovels snow and scoops ice cream, while in Iowa one scoops snow and shovels ice cream. Personally, I like the Iowa attitude to ice cream better. ;)

What's the phrase? "Britain and the United States, two countries separated by a common language?" If you ever have a chance, try flipping through a British/American travel dictionary. It's an eye-opener. Some phrases have totally different connotations depending on where you are.

I'm with dblteam in that many of the words mentioned here are part of my vocabulary, so I wouldn't see a problem with including them in my writing as long as the word matches the narrative, setting or character. Having a street urchin talking like a university professor will quickly destroy my interest in the story since it doesn't make sense. Use the type of words that flow naturally in the story, and don't worry if they won't score high in Scrabble.

Oh, and to add a word to the list: Discombobulated - confused or upset.

[reph]

Oh, and to add a word to the list: Discombobulated - confused or upset.
Pshaw, as characters used to say in old books! Everybody knows "discombobulated" except a few unregenerate flibbertigibbets.

[Mistook]

But can you say of a working system, that it is fully combobulated?

If I am in a good mood, does that mean I am gruntled?

If I am behaving with charm and good manners, am I couth?

[Jacquie]

my personal favourites are

confabulation - the art of pretending you know EXACTLY what you did last night (You see, officer, there must have been a break out at the local zoo, and I'd check that out if I were you, because there was a monkey and I"ll swear it had wings, and it was the monkey what made me swerve onto the footpath and so, you see, it wasn't my fault at all, officer, and you really need to check out that zoo . . . )

echolalia - repeating others words or phrases, ords or phrases, or phrases, phrases.

circumstantiality - talking at length before finally getting to the point, ususally in an overly detailed fashion.

catastrophising - the process of turning small events into disasters (he's 3 minutes late home because there's been a 16 car pileup at the local supermarket and he's right in the middle of it and dying and OH MY GOD I have to call the police)

So I'm thinking that the essence of a successful novelist is one who can practice the art of combining confabulation and catastrophising while avoiding echolalia like the plague, the plague, the plague, and trying to keep circumstantiality to an absolutely, best as you can, more or less complete minimum, really!

[Ella]

Oh excuse me. I dropped in by mistake. I thought the title said Erotic words.

:Smack:

[reph]

Don't go away disappointed, Ella. Drop down to the Words You Thought You Knew forum and take a peek at the brouhaha over "rantallion."

Mistook, if you don't feel like yourself today, are you Took?

[Ella]

Don't go away disappointed, Ella. Drop down to the Words You Thought You Knew forum and take a peek at the brouhaha over "rantallion."

Mistook, if you don't feel like yourself today, are you Took?

Thanks Reph, though to save other unlucky readers the half hour of (enjoyable, I do say) reading to find the reference, here's the link. (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12924&page=8&pp=25)


Will have to dig out my word book.

[brainstrains]

Here's an erotic word for you, Ella.....callipygian

My favorite!


BT

[Ella]

callipygian

A pigeon originating from California, identifiable by it's tan colour and very light yellow hair.

[TheIT]

Pshaw, as characters used to say in old books! Everybody knows "discombobulated" except a few unregenerate flibbertigibbets.

Reph, I have never flibbertied a gibbet in my entire life! ;)

[reph]

Ella, I'm sorry. Complete instructions would have said the thread is called SHROFFAGE and it's usually sticking out on the main page.

Looking up "callipgyian" would mean getting off my big...

[pconsidine]

Well formed...

[NeuroFizz]

Well formed...

ischial tuberosities, yet...

[Danger Jane]

I don't use my vocabulary consciously. Generally the word that fits best, is most descriptive, goes in, and if it doesn't, I sit for a while trying to figure out what that word is. It usually is nothing too complicated, difficult to pronounce, or way multisyllabic.

Using big words for the sake of using big words is what you seem to be doing, albeit subconsciously. I know a million confusing words, but they almost never find their way to the page.

[Penman Shipp]

didymous occuring in pairs ( some of the best things in life come that way )

[BlueTexas]

Monstropolous. I've only seen this word in print twice, and cannot find it in a single dictionary. I can't remember how it was used the first time, but when I came across it yesterday, it was as an adjective.

[Ebelie]

I've always enjoyed finding unfamiliar words in popular fiction - it's where a large part of my vocabulary has come from. Of course, being too lazy to bother looking up unknown words in the dictionary has led to some problems. For instance, it was only recently that I discovered that if someone said something enigmatically they weren't being forceful.

And as far as pronunciation goes, I did tell my partner that he was being "truckulent" once. Oops.

[Greer]

And as far as pronunciation goes, I did tell my partner that he was being "truckulent" once. Oops.

As far as pronunciation goes, your pronunciation of truculent was correct.

As for connotation, I'm not sure your partner would be too happy. :)

[Ebelie]

As far as pronunciation goes, your pronunciation of truculent was correct.

As for connotation, I'm not sure your partner would be too happy. :)

Hm, then maybe it was "trusulent" that I said. You can see how confused all these big words have made me.

In any case you're right, he wasn't impressed.