The Angry Grammarian

Words we miss.

by Jeffrey Barg

Vanishing Spells

Good words are like muscles. They can be really strong and beautiful, but if you don’t use ’em, they’ll atrophy and eventually disappear.

A reader wrote in a few weeks ago lamenting the loss of the word “vicissitude,” meaning changeability (like, for example, language itself). Indeed, a Google Blog Search indicates the word has been used just six times in the last month on the whole Internet. (Not that blogs are the be-all-and-end-all of language, but they aren’t a bad real-time barometer either.) And one of those six times was a weekly blog feature on fancy, underused words.

In that spirit, I solicited reader suggestions of words that aren’t used enough anymore. A few of the best ones:

“Let your faithful readership use the N-word,” writes Earle Spamer, titillatingly. “Introducing a new word or phrase into a language is neology.” (Extra points, Earle, for contextual relevance.)

“I’ve used the word twice in my publications over the years (dealing with the scientific names of animals and plants); each time I did the editor queried it,” Spamer continues. “It’s odd that such a concise word is so overlooked as to be ambiguous when the attempt is made to use it. (Another issue is that both editors did not bother to look up the word.)”

Speaking of titillating: “One of my favorites is ‘cunctation’ and its adjectival form, ‘cunctative,’” writes Jeffrey Saltz. “Sounds awfully bad for someone who’s just a procrastinator.”

Agreed. “Cunctation” comes up just once on Google Blog Search in the last month; “cunctative,” not at all. Their similar-sounding vulgar cousin? 157,402 times. Something’s wrong there.

Daniel Dallmann writes in awe of the word “callipygian”: “This fine word, which entered our language circa 1800, derives from the Greek words kallos, meaning beautiful, and pyge, meaning ass. Webster defines it as meaning ‘having shapely buttocks.’” In other words, junk in the chariot.

If you use it in a bar and don’t get smacked, bully for you. If you use it in a bar and do get smacked, you should propose on the spot. That one’s a keeper.