Cool Words

I was chatting with my brother about some DIY stuff recently, and I somehow uttered two ‘words’ that immediately struck me as cool:

Grub screw
Plinth block

Which made me think about a whole litany of words that, IMHO, are just inherently cool – either because of the way they sound or what they mean.

Got any that come to mind ?

I wrote a poem (a tanka) about one … and it got published:

we both couldn’t sleep
infundibulum I said
is such a cool word
go back to sleep said my bride
but how can I now

Refrigerator/freezer

I’ll let myself out.

Bulbous
Bouffant
Macadamia
Gazebo

I was talking to my wife about fixing the microwave, and mentioned that it was likely a problem with the Magnetron.

She looked at me and said “really?”

Bespoke

Micturition syncope

Love this.

But also finding a large number of great words in a definition of infundibulum. I have underlined my favourites:

  • the hollow stalk which connects the hypothalamus and the posterior pituitary gland.

Therefore infundibulum is truly a hyper-cool word.

A few years ago, there was an Indian politician whose name sounded to me like Bodge-pie, and I thought that was surely the coolest name for a world leader. I later found it’s spelled with a V, but it’s still cool.

Mandibular sounds much more magnificent than its meaning.

Harmonic Balancer
I like it because it sounds like something vastly different than what it is.

Chiffarobe

Plectrum
Trundle
Crepuscular
Perfunctory
Haberdasher
Abscondery

Embiggens
Cromulent

Boomachuck

Chazwozzer

Highfalutin

*Garbanzo beans

defenestration.

A truly wonderful way to remove unwanted politicians. :slight_smile:

Plangent

Sitooterie

Some more I gleaned from a Christmas present book of rare and unusual words:

https://autolycus-london.blogspot.com/2007/12/some-christmas-logodaedaly.html?m=0

Mellifluous

Thalweg

Smorgasbord

therblig.

(the best thing about it is the origin: it’s the engineer’s name backwards (Gilbreth)