​www.wordsofobscurity.com

​DIRECTORY OF LOGOPHILE LIBRARY
Home Page ~ Word List Index ~ Featured Lists
Obscure, Rare, Unusual and Obsolete
​Logophile Language, Writing and Words Knowledge, Intellect, Deep and Profound
​Creativity and Technology
Dark, Mystical, Supernatural and Risqué
Human Psyche, Emotions & Feelings
The Universe and World We Live In
Translating our World​​ | Translating our Slang

FEATURED LISTS WITH COMMENTARY
Pondering the Phobia | Pirate Story & Language

Reference Corner - library for language & words

DISCOVER MORE WORDS
This site is part of a Series of Beautiful Words
Books - Blogs - Guides - Narratives ~ Manuals
VOCABULARY LINKS AND GUIDES

​​SEARCH THIS SITE FOR WORDS
​Search site below or use Advanced Search to search the site & content in my vocabulary books.

LANGUAGE and WORDS

LOGOPHILE : WORDS : TOP TEN ; OBSCURE
WRITING : RHETORIC : SPEECH : POETRY
​BOOKS & LITERATURE
GRAMMAR : VOCABULARY : REFERENCE
Logophile Language Home

THE TOP TEN LIST
​of Beautifully Obscure Literary Words

DIRECTORY OF TOP TEN LISTS

Madness & Maladies
symptoms from writing and maybe too much wordplay


​1)
​MOGIGRAPHIA - from a medical dictionary of 1857, meaning 'writer's cramp,' Two famous pencil-users were Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck; Steinbeck was known to blunt up to 60 pencils a day. ‘

2)
DYSGRAPHIA - finding it hard to write legibly. Author Agatha Christie reportedly suffered from it.

3)
SHTURMOVSHCHINA - practice of writing frantically just before a deadline. It comes from the former Soviet Union and literally refers to a storming or assault.

4)
SCRABBLEMENT - the writing of a rambling madman. From the 17th century.

5)
DONTOPEDALOGY - the aptitude for putting one's foot in one's mouth. Purportedly coined in 1960 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

6)
HELLENOMANIA - using long Greek terms instead of readily understandable English words because of an obsession with Greek culture.

7)
LETHOLOGICA - when you can’t think of a word for something. Also called tip of the tongue. It is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on the tip of my tongue."

8)
LOGORRHEA - excessive wordiness. Also known as press speech, it is a communication disorder that causes excessive wordiness and repetitiveness, which can cause incoherency. Logorrhea is sometimes classified as a mental illness, though it is more commonly classified as a symptom of mental illness or brain injury.

9)
GRAPHORRHEA
A communication disorder expressed by excessive wordiness with minor or sometimes incoherent rambling, specifically in written work. Graphorrhea is most commonly associated with schizophrenia but can also result from several psychiatric and neurological disorders. Some ramblings may follow some or all grammatical rules but still leave the reader confused and unsure about what the piece is abouT.

10)
SEMANTIC SATIATION - when you say or read a word so many times it stops making sense. Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.
TOP TEN LISTS HOME