Do you ever find yourself racking your brains, searching for the right word? Well, you may not have come across these unusual words which might come in handy in daily life. From absquatulate to winebibber: how many of these 11 words have you heard before?
Here are 11 rarely found words in the English language, with definitions from Lexico.com, how many will you adopt as part of your vocabulary?
Absquatulate
Do you ever leave an event in a hurry? You didn’t just make a sneaky exit, you absquatulated.
Absquatulate is a verb meaning “to leave somewhere abruptly”.
Blatherskite
Have you ever met someone who always seems to be talking, but never seems to say anything substantial?
You might call them a blatherskite, a noun meaning “a person who talks at great length without making much sense”.
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Deipnosophist
Do you often have your guests charmed by your dinner party conversation? You may just be a deipnosophist.
That’s a sophisticated way of saying “a person skilled in the art of dining and dinner-table conversation”.
Entomophagy
Grasshoppers, crickets, woodworms and wasps are eaten as a street food snack in many countries around the world, particularly in South East Asia.
Entomophagy is the technical term for eating insects and creepy-crawlies.
It’s even been suggested eating insects might be the next sustainable diet trend in Western countries.
Logomachy
If you recite this list to a friend, you might end up locking horns in a logomachy: an argument about words.
Mumpsimus
A mumpsimus is sticking to a tradition or notion even after it has been shown to be wrong or unreasonable.
For example, if you call an espresso an “expresso” and stick to your guns after being corrected, you’re making a mumpsimus.
As a bonus, the name given to misheard phrases which then gain popularity over the original is an “eggcorn” – another example would be “all intents and purposes” becoming “all intensive purposes”.
Pollex
Here’s a good game: challenge a friend to point to their pollex.
The pollex will certainly perplex many, but they win the game if they can correctly point to their thumb.
Sonder
Have you ever been in a crowded space, like a football stadium or concert venue, and been struck by the sense of all those people each having a full and intricate life?
There’s a word for that: Sonder.
Sonder is a noun meaning “the realisation each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”.
Winebibber
Another essential bit of pub-based vocabulary, a winebibber is a noun meaning a heavy drinker.