10.21.2008

Obambulate is a real word

One of my former English teachers noted that today's word-of-the-day calendar offering was "obambulate." Naturally, I had to google something so homonymic to the democratic presidential nominee, which led me to a list of obscure words. So many of them reminded me of election politics, so I had to share. My absolute favorites are highlighted.

  • acyrology: poor choice of words, poor diction
  • bloviate: to orate verbosely and windily
  • cynosure: a person or thing that is a center of attention
  • epuration: Purification, especially removal of officials or politicians believed to be disloyal; purge.
  • eristic: enjoying argument for its own sake
  • erotesis: a rhetorical question
  • extradictionary: consisting in deeds, not words
  • hypophora: the posing of questions to oneself and the answering of them, or a reasoning aloud
  • logodaedalus: one who is cunning in the use of words
  • logodaedaly: the ability to coin new words, verbal legerdemain
  • logomachy: a dispute about words and their meanings; a quibbling over semantics that gets away from the subject
  • logomonomania: loquacity in manic proportions
  • logorrhea: incoherent or excessible babble
  • longiloquence: long-windedness
  • mumpsimus: 1. Adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy. 2. A person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.
  • obambulate: to walk around or wander
  • obganiate: to irritate with reiteration
  • oofle: the attempt to find the name of a person whose name you should know but cannot remember
  • paralogize: to draw illogical conclusions from a set of facts
  • paramnesia: A distortion of memory in which fact and fantasy are confused.
  • reductive fallacy: the fallacy of reducing a complex issue or problem to one oversimple thing or aspect
  • sciolism: superficial show of knowledge
  • slurvian: American language marked by carelessly slurred pronunciations such as "gimme", "c'mon", and "d'ju"
  • tacenda: things better left unsaid
  • tintiddle: a witty retort you wish you had made but thought of too late
  • tranont: to shift one's position, especially rapidly and stealthily
  • unasinous: equally stupid
  • verbigeration: the habit of frequently repeating favorite words or phrases

2 Comments:

At 11/06/2008 10:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I realize that I've had many tintiddles! Normally, I just call them witty retorts I wish I had made but thought of too late...but giving it one word is such a time saver! :-)

-Boo

 
At 6/11/2009 8:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

tintiddle is my middle name- but some may argue that blovate is more accurate

middle sis

 

Post a Comment

<< Home