English is a wonderful language with some of the strangest pronunciation rules and words that come from many other languages. This is a list of 20 weird English words.
1. Erinaceous
Like a hedgehog
2. Lamprophony
Loudness and clarity of voice
3. Depone
To testify under oath
4. Finnimbrun
A trinket or knick-knack
5. floccinaucinihilipilification
Estimation that something is valueless. Proper pronunciation based on Latin roots: flockə-nowsə-nəkələ-pələ-fək-ation.
6. Inaniloquent
Pertaining to idle talk
7. Limerance
An attempt at a scientific study into the nature of romantic love.
8. Mesonoxian
Pertaining to midnight
9. Mungo
A dumpster diver – one who extracts valuable things from trash
10. Nihilarian
A person who deals with things lacking importance (pronounce the ‘h’ like a ‘k’).
11. Nudiustertian
The day before yesterday
12. Phenakism
Deception or trickery
13. Pronk
A weak or foolish person
14. Pulveratricious
Covered with dust
15. Rastaquouere
A social climber
16. Scopperloit
Rude or rough play
17. Selcouth
Unfamiliar, rare, strange, marvelous, wonderful. For example: The List Universe is such a selcouth website!
18. Tyrotoxism
To be poisoned by cheese
19. Widdiful
Someone who deserves to be hanged
20. Zabernism
The abuse of military power or authority. I wonder how long it will take for this one to show up in the comments.
Mathilda: I'm guessing that defenestrate is related to the German word for window: Fenster.
Actually, it's related to the French word : fenêtre. And the action to throw out of a window : se défenestrer (very close to defenestrate)
Actually it’s latin, as french doesn’t predate german, but latin predates both. Where did you get the idea that this came from french moreso than german from o_O
ROFL. French doesn’t have to predate German for the English word to come from it. English has borrowed thousands of words from various languages throughout its existence. There is one bright side to this though…they may both be right, where you are definitely wrong. At the time that Latin was in heavy use, English didn’t exist. While its certainly plausible that both the German word and the French word for window borrow from Latin “Foenestra,” it would have to be said that English, 90% of which is made up from Anglo-Saxon (west germanic) and Norman-French (romance), borrowed the word “defenestrate” from one of those two languages directly, not Latin.
You should try and give an etymology for the words to better understand them, like ‘nihilarian’ comes from the Latin word nihil meaning ‘nothing’.
2. Lamprophony
believe me the older you get the more important this one becomes…say what? could you please speak up?
4. Finnimbrun
one man’s finnimbrun is another man’s treasure
5. floccinaucinihilipilification
uh..see #4
value is in the eye of the collector
6. Inaniloquent
i do this quite well!
9. Mungo
i could swear there’s a connection w/ #4 and #5
10. Nihilarian
er..there must be a theme going
11. Nudiustertian
damn! was hoping for a nude walker
13. Pronk
hey! some of my best friends are pronks!
20. Zabernism
er…GWB? heh..
Cyn: 20 – It had to be said
I just wasn’t going to be the one to do it!
ah…so you will claim neutrality, eh? LOL
or is that chicken? LOL
Cyn: yeah okay – chicken is probably the case
now see..i’d given ya credit for diplomacy. *grins*
Yay words! I would love to use some of these but alas, nobody would have any idea what I was talking about.
These are great! My favorite word is defenestrate: To throw out of a window This was actually apparently used on Buffy The Vampire Slayer; one of my friends called me to ask me what it meant. I was so pleased to get an opportunity to, if not use it, at least define it!
My brother prefers abacinate: To blind by holding a red-hot metal plate before someone’s eyes. He came across this in his Black’s Legal Dictionary. It’s not so much the word itself that he finds interesting as the fact that apparently this action has been committed enough times to have a word for it.
Zyzygy is a good one.
An astrological term…event when 3 or more heavenly bodies (that is, planets, etc.), line up.
And apparently “Jung used this astrological term to describe deep psychological relationships.”
Actually, the word is Syzygy, not Zyzygy. And primarily astronomical, then astrological.
The primarily definition for pronk or pronking is to describe a bouncing behavior by antelope and deer. When pronking, an animal arches its back, drops its head, and repeatedly bounces vertically off all four feet at the same time. Hilarious to watch, looks like the animals are having a great time. I understand it comes from the Afrikaans/Dutch word pronk , meaning “to strut”.
Libertine- *waves*
Cyn: few are more diplomatic than I am
Kelsi: that is the whole point – how much smarter will you appear when you use these words?
Mathilda: I agree completely with your brother
che: zyzygy – that works makes me think of the movie Fame for some reason – maybe it is onomatapoeic – the sound of the tights whilst dancing.
Dana: Thanks for the interesting expansion on that term. I had no idea.
Libertine: methinks you are correct.
It’s “Syzygy”, with an s-. And it’s not an onomatopoeia. It comes from Ancient Greek: syn (plus) + zyg- (to yoke).
If I had to choose only one of these to add to my vocabulary, it would have to be ‘poisoned by cheese’
Some people die heroically in battle. Others are felled by dread tyrotoxism.
I made you think of the movie FAME ?
Dang, my apologies.
I will not do it again. *sheesh*.
Libertine – or possibly the french word for window – “fenetre”
Actually, defenestration is a commom english word.
means being chucked out of a window.
in english.
defenestration: the act of throwing someone out a window
Couldn’t agree with you more Yarr. How fabulous is that for a word. Defenestrate is one of my favourite words as well.
Reminds me of an old commercial…”Hey, you got your pronk in my mungo!” “You got your mungo in my pronk!”
hey che: it is syzygy
re-reading those comments made me think of Fame again. I am feeling strange urges to watch it now! Maybe someone can think of a new English word for “the feeling of needing to watch Fame”.
“Being lame” is very fine for this.
Ethenabria: hahah that is not at all what I expected, but as you say, perfectly fine
Mathilda–
Go to Prague and study its history. There were several defenestrations. I think that may be what made it great.
It is the wierd words that english interesting dont you think
stan: yes – and the huge variety of different words for the same thing.
A friend of mine is a senior in college, majoring in electrical & Computer engineering. His room is full of old computer parts he pulled out of the dumpster behind one of the buildings at the school. Including a lot of old crap he’d never need (somehow I doubt he’ll ever need several boxes full of vacuum tubes unless a time machine is involved). From now on I’ll be referring to him as “mungo”.
Quick note to Punjar: if among his vacuum tubes your friend possesses some 12AX7s or 6L6 GCs, and they’re intact and functional, there are musicians out there who’d plunk down mad cash for ‘em, as there are vintage instrument amps from the 50s to the early 80s requiring said components, the tone of which makes them prized equipment even to this day. (Old Marshalls and Ampegs and Fenders of yore, y’know.) So those tubes might be no mere finnimbruns — and your friend might be a mungo indeed!
fgejrgnregmreagea
the word defenestration comes from latin, “fenestra” meaning window.
grgrg: aslkdj qwepoi asdpoi s.,ejn – I can’t believe someone else here speaks dsflkyu3. cpvobi.
Ari: indeed – and as any French speaker will know, Fenetre – which also derives from the same Latin root!
Give me back my money you widdiful pronk! Hey, wasn’t “Mungo” one of the cats on the Heathcliff cartoon? Cats are definitely primo dumpster divers!
I’d be interested in the etymology of those odd words.
Nihilarian – how can the ‘h’ in it be pronounced ‘k’? It looks like the root of the word would be the same as for nihilism…
Regarding inaniloquent, that is an adjective, not a verb. It means “pertaining to idle or empty talk”. I can’t find a verb form, but based on its Latin roots, it could be “inaniloquize”.
I’d like to know where you found “limerance” and “mesonoxian”. I couldn’t find them in any of my 2000-volume reference library.
Also, “limerance” appears to be a noun, not a verb. But I realize that looks don’t always fit. For instance, the word “imitation” looks like a noun, but is used as an adjective 99% of the time.
I also agree with someone earlier that the h in “nihilarian” is not pronounced as a k. The Latin root “nihil” doesn’t appear in any dictionary with a k sound in it.
I haven’t examined the second half of the list, but I would suggest that quoting your sources would make this list more credible.
Bruce: pronouncing ‘h’ as ‘k’ occurs in only two words: Mihi and Nihil – it is in modern (Italianate or Ecclesiastical) Latin that this occurs – the only remaining form of Latin spoken regularly. It started to standardize around the 16th century. You can read more about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation
Thanks for the other corrections – they have been updated.
After some searching, I found the word “limerence” in Wikipedia, a redirection of the search on “limerance”. Limerence means an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person. If you have a crush on someone, you are feeling limerence.
As to the k sound in the words mihi and nihil – I took Latin for four years in Ontario and never did we pronounce an h as a k. I have just checked my highschool Latin textbook, and the text suggests that h is always pronounced as in English. As well, no major English dictionary suggests that the h in the Latin root “nihil” should be pronounced as a k. That may be the pronunciation in a certain Latin dialect when speaking the actual Latin words, but the k sound has not migrated into the English Language. In fact, the h in such English words as annihilate and nihilism
is not even pronounced.
For those of you who may be having a difficult time finding mihi, (it isn’t a headword in my Cassell’s Latin Dictionary) mihi in Latin is the dative form of the pronoun “ego” meaning “I”. Mihi means “to me”.
Mihi is also a Maori word – I have no idea how Maori words are pronounced.
Bruce Todd: Mihi is pronounced mi-hee in Maori. Mihi and Nihil in Latin are the ONLY words in Italiante Latin that are pronounced with the ‘k’ sound – otherwise it has the ‘h’ sound. As I said in a previous comment (that you should have read but haven’t) it is in Italianate Latin – the only version of Latin that is still spoken in the world and is not academic. Therefore, it is the CORRECT pronunciation – you are pronouncing it with an accent long dead.
I corrected my item on limerance.
Thank you for your replies.
Yes I did read your responses to me – very carefully, and I read the Wikipedia article you referred to. What I am saying is that the English word “nihilarian” does not use a k sound for the h, because nihilarian is not an Italianate Latin word, but rather an English word formed from the Latin root “nihil”.
I notice that you did not change limerance to limerence as per Wikipedia’s article.
Nudiustertian is not a noun, but an adjective meaning “pertaining to the day before yesterday”. It can be found in the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary.
Tyrotoxism is not a verb, but a noun meaning “cheese-poisoning”. It too can be found in the Unabridged OED.
Cheers.
this is so boring how can you stand it????????????
Penis?
Re: 5. floccinaucinihilipilification. Where do you get the “k” sound in your pronunciation “flockə-nowsə-nəkələ-pələ-fək-ation”? Shouldn’t it be “flockə-nowsə-næhilə-pili-fə-kashən”?
Sadly, this makes me wonder whether your actual definitions are correct.
Carl: this is explained in some of the comments above – in certain types of Latin, ‘h’ is pronounced as a ‘k’ in the words “nihil” and “mihi”. The word you are referring to contains “nihil”. Either pronunciation is fine.
i always liked the phrase “weird science”. both words break the “i before e, except after c” rule.
plus it made for an entertaining 80′s movie and TV show.
Carl – jfrater’s explanation is correct, and it relates to ecclesiastical Latin. Whilst Virginia Tech showed up on these lists recently within a more profoundly unfortunate context, let me quote their Music Faculty in relation to this matter :
“H is pronounced K in the two words nihil (nee-keel) and mihi (mee-kee), and their compounds. In ancient books these words are often written nichil and michi. In all other cases H is mute.”
Here is the URL : http://www.music.vt.edu/performance/ensembles/eme/EMELatinPro.html
It’s really very useful for me.
You should have put in Butyraceous! it means resembling butter in appearance, consistency, or chemical properties and is one of my favourite words.
haha gr8 wrds.id comment but im suposed 2 b doing my homework
What about interrobang‽ It’s a combination between an exclamation and question mark.
hahahah i just put Zabernism in my history cause work lols nice
Callipygian:
Having well-shaped buttocks
I actually use Nihilarian and Mungo quite often, (Often times in the same sentence really…)
Here is a nice word:
Gegenscheine: A patch of very faint nebulous light sometimes seen in the night sky opposite the position of the sun. It is thought to be the image of the sun reflected from gas and dust outside the atmosphere.
what about lactomangulation – failure to open a milk carton
It’s spelled “limerence”.
some of them are actually greek
What the ***** ?
The parts of speech would have been nice
i used to be a mungo
I’ve always liked nebbish…a weak-willed person
Duplicitous- Two faced
BlackHandJack, that would be Gegenschein. Gegenscheine is the plural.