Wednesday 31 July 2013

Andy Flegg’s Word For The Day (or how to avoid hippomonstrosesquippedaliophobia)

Since The Andy Flegg Survival Guide hit the bookshelves last week, a lot of the feedback I’ve received so far has been all about Andy’s weird words.

For those that haven’t read the book, After Andy’s mum instructs him to include a new word in each of his diary entries in an attempt to help improve his vocabulary, Andy reluctantly starts trawling the internet in search of good ones to be his Word for the Day (WFD).

I have to say this was lots of fun to research for me too and I honestly learned almost as much as Andy. For example who knew that cacology was a bad choice of words or that a pronk was a weak or foolish person?

If you like this sort of stuff then please go and buy the book. But I wanted to list a few of my favourites here if only to encourage myself to start using them in everyday language.

Just imagine how your friends and family will look at you in a new and admiring light when they ask how your school day was and you can tell them it sucked because your wlatsome teacher is a total blatteroon who threatens dippoldism every time one of your friends snurts, snirtles or feffs. And worst of all his breath is jumentous and you think he’s a blattoid crissum.

Or for the boys amongst us, when you meet a hot girl and you can tell her she’s totally pulchritudinous, and you have an epithymy to go out with her because you are ensorcelled by her callipygian figure. Then when she’s in awe of your language skills and instantly accepts you can say that’s skookum news and you are totally mabsoot.

 Seriously, how could that fail to work as a great chat up line?

So if this kind of thing appeals to you then the good news is that there are literally hundreds of fantastic words out there just waiting to be rediscovered. I used heaps of sources for the book but just to get you started this is a link to one of the better compilations that I found.

Remember just check to make sure they’re not ersatz and never try to hornswoggle. But other than that, go for your life! Who knows maybe one day you’ll be a WFD cognoscente just like Andy Flegg.

By the way in case you are wondering what they all mean I failed to find a clever way of linking the text to the definitions so have resorted to listing them all below instead.

wlatsome (adjective) –repulsive loathsome, detestable

blatteroon (noun) - senseless blabberer or boaster who will never stop talking

dippoldism (noun) – the act of beating school children

snurt (noun) – the explusion of mucus while sneezing.

snirtle (verb) – to suppress laughter, to snigger, to snort

feff (noun) – a foul smell associated with a child breaking wind.

jumentous (adjective) – smelly like horse urine

blattoid (adjective) – having the characteristics of a cockroach

crissum (noun) – a bird’s anus

pulchritudinous (adjective) – beautiful, angelic, charming, hot, cute, dazzling

epithymy (noun) – a vigorously lustful desire

ensorcelled (adjective) – bewitched or enchanted

callipygian (adjective) – having finely developed, beautiful or shapely buttocks.

skookum (adjective) – the best, ultimate, excellent

mabsoot (adjective) – happy, joyful, pleased 

ersatz (adjective) -not real, fake

hornswoggle (verb) – to trick or deceive

cognoscente (noun) – a person who has a vast or superior knowledge in a particular 

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