DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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DIRECTORY OF OBSCURITY
​The Old, Rare & Unusual
OBSCURE | WEIRD | OBSOLETE
Obscurity WordMap

WORD LISTS SPECIAL FEATURES ​WORDS FROM OTHER CATEGORIES ​ARTICLES FROM THE REFERENCE CORNER Learn about weird and wacky words

WEIRD AND WACKY WORDS
strange and bizarre old and rare words
OBSCURITY OF THE NORM
obscure words for everyday things

BRINGING BACK
the old, rare & archaic​OBSOLETE WORDS

DIRECTORY OF WORD LISTS
SEE ALSO FROM THE REFERENCE CENTER:
​Death March for an Obsolete Word
Classifying Words by Usage - New to Obsolete
​Ye Olde Fossils Keep On Kicking
​Tracing the Etymology of a Word

Merry Ole Archaism
WAY BEYOND OBSOLETE


​ALLOTRIOPHAGY - the desire to devour strange substances commonly regarded as inedible, non nutritional, or even hurtful. Like Tide Pods for instance? It derives from Ancient Greek. The prefix ‘allo’ is thought to mean ‘different’ and ‘allotrio’ is thought to mean ‘strange or foreign’. While the suffix ‘phagy’ is thought to derive from ‘phageîn’ meaning ‘to eat’.

APRICITY - you know when it’s a cold winter’s day but the sun is just gloriously warm? That’s “apricity” and the word dates back to the 1620s.

BRABBLE - to argue loudly with someone in public place.

BUMFODDER - toilet roll or a derogatory term for large, but necessary, amounts of paperwork.
Later (1650s) this became a term for a newspaper or magazine. Has also been used to mean bureaucratic or officious documents.

CIRCUMGYRATION - running around in circles or causing something to move in a circular motion. Rolling, turning or traveling about.

CRAPULOUS - to feel ill from excessive eating or drinking, like feeling crapulous the morning after your birthday cake celebration.

DRAGONISM - practice of staying awake forever, ready to attack. Other definitions suggest ‘a strict or domineering manner’, ‘unremitting watchfulness’ and ‘watchful guardianship’.

ELEUTHEROMANIA - crazed desire for freedom. Comes from the Ancient Greek word ‘eleutheria’ (meaning liberty or freedom) and the suffix ‘mania’ (meaning mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions and overactivity’).

ELFLOCK - if you have wavy hair and you wake up with it tangled and mangled, that’s elflock, as though the elves have tied it into knots during the night.

EXCOGIGATE - plot, plan, devise, with Latin roots that mean to bring out by thinking. Also, NOT used in relation to writing lists.

FROBLY-MOBLY - half finished, “half assed”.
It appears to mean “neither well or unwell” on many websites but no one definition seems to exist . It seems to mean something like ‘neither here nor there’, ‘middle of the road’ or something that is neither one extreme or the other but somewhere in the middle.

GORGONIZE - from the early 17th century, this lovely word means to have a mesmerizing effect on someone.

GROAK - to watch someone silently as they eat, in the hope that you will be invited to join them.

GRUMPISH - this one dates back to the 1720s and is an alternative to sullen or grumpy.

GUTTLE - eat greedily or voraciously; gormandize. Guttle is a rare word that has been in use since about 1650. It may come from ‘gut’ and was maybe influenced by ‘guzzle’ (a word with the same meaning that has been in use since 1500s.

HOUPPELANDE - Is a medieval word for cloak or outerwear.

HUM-DURGEON - Sometimes seen as humdurgeon, hum durgeon or humdudgeon. An imaginary illness. This definition was originally taken from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose. Sometimes it has been referred to as a ‘depressed state’ but is often referred to as ‘imaginary’.

IDIOREPULSIVE - feeling disgusted about yourself. From the prefix ‘idio’ meaning ‘personal or own’ and repulsive.

JARGOGLE - to confuse things or mix things up.

LOLLYGAGGING - spend time aimlessly or dawdle or dally. Possibly from the mid 19th century. Suggested etymology is ‘lolly’ meaning ‘tongue’ and ‘gag’ meaning ‘trick’.

MALAGRUGROUS - wrinkling one’s brow in a dismal manner.

NOONINGSCAUP - rest granted to the farm laborers after a particularly laborious lunch.
Cited in ‘I Never Knew There Was a Word For It’ by Adam Jacot Boinod meaning the laborer’s resting time after dinner. It’s suggested that ‘nooning’ means a rest or meal at noon. ‘Nooning’ comes from early 16th century

OGO-POGOING - looking for love, ‘wandering around with vague hopes of love’. An online definition suggests it comes from an aquatic monster said to live in Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada.

PISMIRE - literally, a word that’s derived from small insect and piss. Defined as an ant.

QUOCKERWODGE - from the 1850s meaning a wooden puppet that was controlled by strings.

QUOMODOCUNQUIZE - make money in any way that you can. It was cited by Sir Thomas Urquhart in 1652.

RIZZLE - process (almost like meditation) in which you sit in a darkened room, closing you eyes and just sit, usually after a meal. To relax after a heavy meal. It appears to come from late 19th century America and was found within medical journals.

SNOWBROWTH - dating all the way back to the 1590s, snowbrowth refers to freshly melted snow.

SWALLOCKY - hot day (and expected thunderstorms). Some people online have used it to mean that a thunderstorm is on the way.

TWATTLE - to gossip, as in stop twattling and get back to work!
​
TWIDDLE-POOP - an effeminate looking man. This definition comes from the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose.

UXORIOUS - excessively fond of one’s wife. Thought to originate from the late 16th century, cited in some references from 1598 specifically.

VICAMBULIST - specifically a ‘night foundered vicambulist’ means a ‘street-walker who has got lost in the darkness’. It doesn’t specify if street walker means prostitute or just somebody walking around the street

WAMBLECROPT - queasy/nauseous. Referenced online as ‘wamble-cropped’ and meaning having a rumbling stomach, sickly. The word was first cited in 1616 but isn’t used again until 1798 in America. After this point it was usually used as a joke.

YARRUM - thieves slang for milk. From the Dictionary of a Vulgar Tongue. it was used in Richard Brome’s A Joviall Crew: or the Merry Beggars, first performed in 1641.

ZARF - the cardboard slip around a coffee cup that keeps you from burning your fingers. Zarf translates to ‘envelope’ from the Turkish language (originally from Arabic meaning ‘container’ and ‘envelope’) and it was in Turkey (around the 13th century) that coffee became popular. The cups were without handles and were placed in these holders called ‘zarf’.

The Old, Rare & Unusual
OBSCURE | WEIRD | OBSOLETE
Obscurity WordMap

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