Unusual Words, Some of Which May be Useful I

There are several dictionaries of unusual words online. The basic problem with these (here is a good example), is that you really don't know if the words listed are actually attested in a historical dictionary (like the OED) or have really ever been used by anyone. Some of the words are clearly made up by someone who is just stringing two Latin or Greek words together. Such an example would be apodyopsis, which the maker of that online resource defines as "mentally undressing someone." But the word isn't attested anywhere that I could find. Then, as I read through his list of words, I noted a lot of them connected with undressing people. Surely he, or someone he hangs out with, spends too much time in this activity.

Then, there are words which, though attested, really take you nowhere. Or, alternatively said, they take you to a dead end very quickly and, unless you have hours of time, you don't really understand them. Such a term is abacinate. The OED does have the word, defined as "to blind by placing hot irons, or metal plates, in front of the eyes." Abacination is attested in Chambers' Journal from 1866 but, as this web article suggests, you quickly reach a dead end in trying to understand this medieval form of torture. Thus, even though the word may be attested, it isn't very useful to us.

A third category of words are those lightly attested but which have the promise of utility. Let's explore the word aeolist for a minute. Jonathan Swift invented the term as a word for "a pretender to inspiration or spiritual regeneration." His usage, from the 1704 Tale of a Tub, is this: "The learned Aeolists maintain the original cause of all things to be wind." Actually, as is true with a lot of Swift's writing, there is deep humor here. Though there are several "Aeol-derived" words in English, the basic one is Aeolus, the Greek word for the god and ruler of the winds, which at his will he set free or held prisoners in a hollow mountain." Yet, as this article says, the Greek mythographers may have confused three similarly-named deities, and even the definition that I so blithely gave reflects some of this confusion. Usually someone who is the custodian of the winds isn't also a wind. So, which is it? Thus, here is another problem I can't solve...The underlying Greek term actually means "the changeable" or "the rapid."

The (popular) adjectival form of the word is aeolian, which means "wind-blown." As such, it refers to a stringed instrument in ancient Greece, the harp or lyre, whose sound is derived by the wind. There is also the "Aeolian mode" in music, though I can't pursue that here. Aeolic refers to a region in Asia Minor colonized by the Greeks as well as the dialect of Greek spoken there.

After this brief tour we return to Swift. An aeolist pretends to inspiration. Inspiration, from the Latin, means to be "blown into." Thus, an aeolist really is full of wind, and s/he thinks that all things are derived from wind. I could see how the word could be recovered. Rather than referring to someone as a "wind-bag" or someone as "full of it," why not call them an "aeolist"? Behind it we have the picture of Aeolus, the god blowing the ships along.

Some Other Useful Words

Before leaving this essay, Let's speak briefly of some other useful words from an "unusual" list of words. There are several words ending in "loquent" (i.e., "speaking") which call for brief comment: grandiloquent, altiloquent, flexiloquent, breviloquent, inaniloquent. Then, I will close with fuscoferruginous.

We know that eloquent speaking is articluate or fluent talk. A grandiloquent person is characterized by "swelling or pompous expression." Altiloquent is a rare word, but means the same thing as grandiloquent. An inaniloquent speaker is "full of empty or idle talk." Blound first used the word in his 1656 Glossographia: "Inaniloquent, that speatheth vainly, a babbler." Someone who is blessedly breviloquent is brief or laconic. If you are flexiloquent, you are "flexible" in your speech, which means you speak words of doubtful or double meaning. The Latin word flectere means "to bend," and so a flexiloquent person can "bend" either way.

Conclusion--Fuscoferruginous

The prefix "fusco" brings us into the word of darkness, because the Latin fuscus means "dark" or "dusky." We all know the word "obfuscation," and this literally means a "darkening" or "obscurity." Something fuscescent is "somewhat fuscous" or, more usefully, "approaching dark brown, or tinged with that color." Thus, fuscoferruginous combines "dark" and "rusty." Fuscoferruginous is a word especially used in entomology to mean "rust-colored with a brownish tinge." But, while we are fuscing around, why not define fuscopiceous (dull or dark reddish-black) and fuscotestaceous (dull or dark reddish-brown)? Ferruginous, as you probably know, refers to iron rust or something that contains iron rust. Piceous, derived from the Latin piceus, means "relating to or resembling pitch," i.e, something browninsh-black or dark. Something testaceous is, literally, "consisting of tiles, shells; brick-colored." Thus, it is also, as the OED tells us, applied to shades of brownish red, brownish yellow, and reddish brown.

Moe could be done on testaceous, especially on the point of the connection of a tile or shell to the color red or yellow, but not here and not by me...

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