Some English words are unutterable, not for their rudeness but because to say them aloud would make you sound like a stick-in-the-mud.
No, these tasty old words (like “pickerdevant” and “susurrous”) should be savoured on the page, in the quietude of our minds, and there remain a secret, guilty pleasure.
A reason, perhaps, why these words feel so good to read but make us sound pompous when spoken is that these two worlds – of speech and writing – are so divergent.
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So much so that it is possible to damage the part of the brain responsible for one without affecting the other, a recent study found.
“It’s as though there were two quasi-independent language systems in the brain,” said lead author Professor Brenda Rapp, a cognitive scientist.
With this in mind, the author trusts that you will savour the following list of weird and wonderful words without daring to give them voice.
List of words
 | Accismus: pretending not to want something you truly do desire |
 | Bombinate: to make a humming or buzzing noise |
 | Bookstaves: the letters of the alphabet |
 | Chatoyant: like a cat’s eye |
 | Cledonism: the use of superfluous words to avoid saying something that is supposedly unlucky |
 | Crepuscular: dim or twilit |
 | Dottle-trot: to walk with short, quick steps rather than long strides. |
 | Ebullience: bubbling enthusiasm |
 | Eusystolism: using the initial letters of profanity or an embarrassing phrase to avoid saying it in full |
 | Fugacious: fleeting |
 | Gazing-stock: someone at whom everyone else is staring |
 | Huffle: a sudden gust of wind |
 | Ingeniculation: the act of bending a knee |
 | Inglenook: a cozy nook by the hearth |
 | Jingbang: the entirety of something |
 | Junkettaceous: frivolous, worthless |
 | Mugwumpery: a total disinterest in politics |
 | Nawlstring: a baby’s umbilical cord |
 | Petrichor: the smell of earth after rain |
 | Phosphenes: the lights you see when you rub your eyes |
 | Pickerdevant: a short beard, trimmed to a point at the chin |
 | Purpurescent: tinged with purple |
 | Quatopygia: the enticing movement of a man or woman’s buttocks |
 | Quinquangular: to have five sides or corners |
 | Recumbentibus: a knockout blow |
 | Susurrous: whispering or hissing |
 | Syzygy: an alignment of celestial bodies |
 | Tachygraphy: shorthand writing |
 | Vellichor: the strange wistfulness of used bookshops |
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