“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” – John Keating, Dead Poets Society.
Words are wonderful. I am a logophile (and a quicquidlibet) and spend most of my time in loganamnosis, alas to lilliputian avail. But words can espouse your deepest desire or your most fraught fear, one’s physiognomical beauty or the anamorphosis of one’s phizog. Yet, our society depends extensively on an infinitesimal vocabulary to express ourselves. Why would we use the word jocundity when we can use happy, or acrimonious when bitter works just as well. When is the idoneous use of idoneous? Or the apropos use of germane?
This anteloguy is completely duncical but I’m going to offer some euonyms, some cacophonies and a collection of the anomalous for your reading joie de vivre.
(Lol, never fear, no one actually speaks like this).
Manias
Gamomania
An obsession with issuing odd marriage proposals
Onychotillomania
The compulsive picking at one’s fingernails
Pteridomania
A passion for ferns
Rhinotillexomania
Compulsive nose picking
Oenomania
An obsession for wine
Metromania
A compulsion to write poetry
Words
Metrophobia
A fear of poetry
Epeolatry
The worship of words
Tsundoku
The act of leaving a book unread after buying it
(a Japanese word that doesn’t have a direct synonym in English)
Wordnesia
When even the simplest word looks weird and wrong
(I had wordnesia with ‘what’ the other day…)
Verbicide
The destruction of the meaning of a word
Books
Vellichor
The strange wistfulness of bookshops
(I love this feeling!)
Librocubicularist
Someone who reads in bed
Bibliobibuli
Those who read too much
Stichomancy
Divining the future from lines in books chosen at random
Rhapsodomancy
Divining the future by picking a passage of poetry at random
Omnilegent
Someone who has read everything
Hamartia
A fatal flaw that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero/heroine
Bodies
Pogonotrophy
The act of growing and grooming facial hair
Agastopia
The admiration of a particular part of someone’s body
Evancalous
Pleasant to embrace
(What a sweet compliment!)
Phobias
Kakorrhaphiophobia
The fear of failure
Parthophobia
The fear of virgins
Linonophobia
The fear of string
Geniophobia
The fear of chins
Pteronophobia
The fear of being tickled by feathers
Oenophobia
The fear of wine
Arachibutyrophobia
The fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
(my favourite word of all time)
Triskaidekaphobia
The fear of number 13
Macrophobia
The fear of prolonged waiting
Panophobia
Melancholia marked by groundless fears
Food & Eating
Xertz
To gulp down something quickly and greedily
Apivorous
Those who eat bees
Ichthyophagous
Those who eat fish
Pagophagia
The eating of trays of ice to help offset an iron deficiency
(…?)
Myrmecophagous
Those who eat ants
Nature
Petrichor
The scent outside after it rains
(Bliss)
Jillick
To skip a stone across water
Zoanthropy
The delusion of a person who believes himself changed into an animal
Nubigenous
Cloud-born
Psithurism
The sound of the wind and rustling leaves in the trees
Plain bizarre (and sesquipedalian) words
Lautenclavicymbel
A lute harpsichord with gut strings
Podobromhydrosis
Smelly feet
Eellogofuscioushipoppokunurious
Good
Gynotikolobomassophile
One who nibbles on women’s earlobes
(there’s an actual word for this… no joke)
Perpilocutionist
One who speaks through his hat
Zenodocheionology
A love of hotels
Nonsensical
A variation of words meaning nonsense, or an amphigouri:
- Quatsch
- Morology
- Kelter
- Flimflam
- Flummadiddle
- Fadoodle
- Bugaboo
- Clatfart
- Galimatias
- Rannygazoo
- Schmegeggy
- Stultiloquence
I hope this was lepid!
