Where did you learn that word?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I remember learning that word very well. Had to look it up after seeing Edward Gorey use it in his delightfully macabre “Gashleycrumb Tinies,” about 26 little kids, named in alphabetical order, who die in various unpleasant ways. “E is for Edward, who died of ennui,” as I recall.

When I was 11 or so I called another boy a “slut” once, not knowing what it meant but knowing it was an insult, and was gently corrected by my mom.

Lightray, I looked up and learned “puissance” after reading it in Thomas Berger’s great Arthurian novel Arthur Rex in high school. Also learned “recreant,” “catamite” and “zounds” from that book.

I read a lot as a kid and often knew a word before I knew its pronunciation. For instance, I said “despot” with a silent “t” (like “depot,” I reasoned) before being set right.

22

Pulchritudinous - Bugs Bunny cartoon
Pachyderm - Bugs Bunny cartoon
Pusillanimous - Bugs Bunny cartoon
Give me a while to think about it, and I’ll come up with a lot more.

23

For the record (in the order they appear in this thread):

caprice: an abrupt change in feeling, opinion, or action, proceeding from some whim or fancy; a freak; a notion.

bailiwick: the area over which a bailiff has jurisdiction

haver: to maunder; to talk foolishly; to chatter.

disobey: to transgress the commands of one in authority

cusp: point formed by two intersecting arcs

phenomenon: That which strikes one as strange, unusual, or unaccountable

merge: to join or combine

fuck: to have sexual intercourse (with). [vulgar slang]

gossamer: characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy

egregious: conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible

latigo: a strap for tightening a saddle girth

epicene: having an ambiguous sexual identity

inchoate: only partly in existence; imperfectly formed

ennui: the feeling of being bored by something tedious

non sequitur: a reply that has no relevance to what preceded it

desultory: marked by lack of definite plan or regularity or purpose

philippic: a speech of violent denunciation

lambent: softly bright or radiant

argent: lustrous gray; covered with or tinged with the color of silver

puissance: power to influence or coerce

soporific: sleep inducing

ineluctable: impossible to avoid or evade

anamnesis: the ability to recall past occurrences

lordosis: a curvature of the spine forwards, usually in the lumbar region

shibboleth: a favorite saying of a sect or political group

to relieve oneself: to urinate

crackpot: a whimsically eccentric person

despise: look down on with disdain

vaginal: of or relating to the vagina

shit: obscene terms for feces

sodomy: anal intercourse committed by a man with a man or woman

orgasm: the moment of most intense pleasure in sexual intercourse

carious: affected with cavities or decay

telic: denoting the final end or purpose, as distinguished from ecbatic

crepitation: the sharp sound of snapping noises

etoliate: ???

supercallifragilisticexpialidocious: something about being atrociously precocious

coitus: the act of sexual procreation between a man and a woman; the man’s penis is inserted into the woman’s vagina and excited until orgasm and ejaculation occur

fellatio: oral stimulation of the penis

cunnilingus: oral stimulation of the vulva or clitoris

jejune: lacking matter; empty; void of substance

slut: an untidy woman; a slattern

recreant: having deserted a cause or principle

catamite: a boy kept for unnatural purposes

zounds: An exclamation formerly used as an oath, and an expression of anger or wonder.

despot: a cruel and oppressive dictator

pulchritudinous: used of persons only; having great physical beauty

pachyderm: any of various nonruminant hoofed mammals having very thick skin: elephant; rhinoceros; hippopotamus

pusillanimous: contemptibly fearful

24

Here are the scripts I used to get all of those definitions:

Copy/paste these into their respective filenames, put both files in c:\windows\system32. From a command prompt you can then type something like define egregious or define “non sequitur” (sorry, Windows only)

define.bat



@echo off
cls

cscript //nologo GetDefinition.vbs %1

GetDefinition.vbs



Dim objArg
Set objArg = WScript.Arguments

If objArg.Count <> 1 Then
	WScript.Echo "USAGE: cscript //nologo " + WScript.ScriptName + " <word>"
	WScript.Quit 1
End If

word = objArg(0)

Set definitions = GetDefinitions(word)

Count = 0
If Not definitions is nothing Then
	WScript.Echo ""	

	For each definition in definitions
		WScript.Echo definition.text
		WScript.Echo ""
		Count = Count + 1
	Next
End If

If Count = 0 Then
	WScript.Echo "No definitions found for """ + word + """"
End If


'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Function GetDefinitions(word)
    set xmlhttp = CreateObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP")
    url = "http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx"
    xmlhttp.open "POST", url,false
    
    xmlhttp.setRequestHeader "SOAPAction", "http://services.aonaware.com/webservices/Define"
    xmlhttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "text/xml"
    
    xmlhttp.send "<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'><soap:Body><Define xmlns='http://services.aonaware.com/webservices/'><word>" + word + "</word></Define></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>"

    Set resp = xmlhttp.responsexml
    If not resp is nothing and not resp.documentElement is nothing Then
        Set GetDefinitions = resp.documentElement.selectNodes("//WordDefinition")
    Else
        Set GetDefinitions = Nothing
    End If
        
End Function
25

Alternatively, you can use the Answers extension to Firefox, the just alt-click on a word to see its definition in a popup.

26

[ul]
[li]Asinine- A friend’s mom who always complained about everything used this word around me when I was 11. I thought it was quite funny.[/li][li]Bollox- First read it in MAD magazine.[/li][li]Charisma- Learned this one in church.[/li][li]Debonair- George Carlin routine where he told an entire story using words that rhyme with “air”.[/li][li]Evaporate- I was seven years old when I asked my mom why spilled water will disappear after awhile if it’s not wiped up. She said this is called “evaporation.” When I tried to look it up in my children’s dictionary, I was looking for the word “vaporate”. I didn’t hear the “e” at the beginning.[/li][li]Mirage- When I was four years old I asked my Mom why it looks like there’s water on the road but then it disappears when you get close to it. She explained this is a mirage, which is caused by the heat radiating off the surface (or words a four-year-old would understand).[/li][li]Obliterate- When we were 11 a friend of mine used this word to describe what he was doing to the dense grouping of mushrooms he was shooting away in the arcade game Centipede. I thought it was just a word he made up.[/li][li]Pedestrian- I saw a sign that read “PED XING”. I asked my mom what a “ped” is. She explained that it was short for “pedestrian”, a person walking alongside or across the roadway.[/li][/ul]

27

You can also easily look up word definitions in Safari (and other apps) on Mac OSX by double-clicking a word to select, then right-click and choose “Look up in Dictionary”.

Was this from Foghorn Leghorn, by any chance? That rooster had a huge vocabulary.

28

I have to admit that I don’t remember specifically. I think the pulchritudinous pachyderms was in a cartoon with Bugs Bunny and a circus, and pusillanimous might have had to do with Elmer Fudd, but I’m not sure.

We looked up words in the dictionary all the time. Dad used to do this to us all the time:
Us: Dad, what does ‘pulchritudinous’ mean?
Dad: It’s pretty much the same thing as ‘resplendent.’
Us: groan What does ‘resplendent’ mean?
Dad: Why don’t you look it up?

Dad got a perfect score on the SAT verbal.

29

Well, I don’t want to offend anyone, but I can recall specifically being in the backseat of Dad’s Jeep Cherokee, when my sister’s friend Denise told us she had named her rabbit “jigaboo.” I laughed because I had never heard this before and it sounded like a funny made up word. I didn’t realize it was a racial epithet until I saw it used in some Police Academy movie.

30

When asked how to spell something, my mom would say “D-I-C-T-I-O…”

31

dildo - Heard it at Little League practice, decided it was some funny new insult, and called my sister one at dinnertime. My parents let it go after it became clear I didn’t know what it meant. After dinner I checked my dictionary, then the unabridged one. Ooohh, that’s why they were shocked :eek:
Most recently I picked up palaver from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

32

Accoutrements - Daffy Duck: “Pardon me whilst I adjust my accoutrements.”

33

Onomatopoeic

From the book, Christine, by Stephen King: “Oh God, what an onomatopoeic family, I thought. For Christ’s sake don’t put a bank-shang-a-lang on them, Pops–they might make poopy kaka in their pants.”

I loved that quote so much, but I had to look up onomatopoeic before I could truly appreciate it. I think that was in fifth grade.

34

Defenestrate - In a comic in an issue of Heavy Metal magazine. Some guy was being sentenced to death by immediate defenestration. Cool word.

Then I told my dad about it and he told me about The Defenestration of Prague.

35

Ooh, my new favorite word. New novel idea for Sue Grafton: “D is for Defenestration”

36

I learned “plethora” after having no idea on the PSAT. Come to think of it, I think I learned quite a few words studying for the PSAT. And I figured out “implode” while taking the PSAT.

37

When I was a Boy Scout camp counselor, far from any dictionary that the Scouts might consult, I had a sign up in the waterfront area: “Defenestrating prohibited.” When the boys asked me what it meant, I just smiled.

38

As I wrote in a long-ago thread, Ped Xing was the ancient Chinese inventor of the Crosswalk, and to this day they commemorate it by writing his name in Pinyin at many such crosswalks.

39

Me too! I have a cover of that song somewhere, too, and it’s hilarious because it goes “When I haver–WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS!!!–I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you” or something. It’s awesome :slight_smile:

40

Reciprocity. Learned form one of my favorite english teachers who, while we were all writing short stories or something (him included), exclaimed out loud that he couldn’t remember the word and tried to give us a definition. But it is such an akward word that he could barely define it–and none of us knew it anyway. He came in the next day and prouldy spelt out reciprocity on the board.
Oddly enough, I still have a hard time remembering the word. It usually goes like “what’s that word that’s so hard to remeber? … ah! I can’t remember!”

It’s almost impossible to actually use in a non-technical sentence. My favorite use (which I basically made up) is “This reciprocal saw reciprocates with greater reciprocity than the old model.”