Now well into its second year, Webb’s “Weird Words” is principally concerned with oddball vocabulary — terms like tchotchke, whigmaleerie, foozle, bosky and tintinnabulation, all of which we’ve covered in this space.
But over the last five columns, “WW” has been sidetracked on related etymological issues — specifically, terms that come from numbers (i.e., quintessential, decimate, sextant), along with so-called “blends” (like cremains, frenemy and banjolele).
So let us now return to the task at hand, with a brand-new batch of actual … weird words! All of these are nouns, by the way:
Corroboree (kuh-RAB-uh-ree) – Australian word — from that land’s indigenous Dharuk people — for a native convocation that is festive, sacred or warlike. It now has the adapted meaning of “any noisy gathering” (Collins).
Dithyramb (DITH-uh-ram) – A wild or enthusiastic Greek song, originally honoring the wine-god Dionysus (a.k.a., Bacchus). Like the previous term, it has now been generalized to designate an irregular or impassioned poem — or more broadly, any speech or writing of this kind. Adjective form: dithyrambic (third syllable stressed).
Flumadiddle (flum-uh-DID-ul) – Not found in most of my hard-copy dictionaries, this terrific word is listed on the Merriam-Webster site, and at the reliable Dictionary.com — where it is defined as “utter nonsense” or “worthless frills.”
In the former sense, it has many amusing synonyms, including balderdash, piffle, blather, poppycock, hooey, hogwash, claptrap, gibberish, codswallop, twaddle, tommyrot — and flummery, from which it may be derived. (The added suffix diddle can mean to cheat, hoax or fool around with.)
Foofaraw (FOO-fuh-raw) – Speaking of “frills”: the delightful foofaraw has a similar meaning: “excessive or flashy ornamentation” — with the added possible sense of “commotion or disturbance over a trifling matter” (American Heritage).
Mountweazel (MOUNT-wee-zul) – From Dictionary.com: “a decoy entry in a reference work, such as a dictionary or encyclopedia, secretly planted among the genuine entries to catch other publishers in the act of copying content.”
What a great word — and an amazing concept! Dictionary.com goes on to explain where it came from:
“First recorded in 1975–80; from a fictitious entry in the fourth edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia: Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, who supposedly died on assignment while covering an explosion for the fictitious Combustibles magazine.”
Pulvilli (puhl-vil-EYE) – Fun-to-say plural of pulvillus, which the excellent Random House College Dictionary defines as “a soft, padlike structure located at the base of each claw on the feet of certain insects.” (The original singular, btw, has a stress on the middle syllable: puhl-VILL-us.)
Originating from a Latin word that means “little cushion,” it is also found in the species name Porania pulvillus — a sea star which, as it turns out, does look like a bit like tiny, colorful throw-pillow.
Twibill (TWI-bill) – Finding this buried on my lengthy weird-word list and not remembering a thing about it, I at first thought twibill sounded like a bird of some sort. But actually, it’s a double-edged battleax — or a two-armed mattock (a farm implement for breaking up soil). Both senses derive from the Old English twi, meaning “two” (as in twin and twain).
Yataghan (YAT-uh-gann … or -gun) – “A Turkish saber having a doubly curved blade, concave toward the hilt, and a hilt with a prominent pommel and no guard.”
That definition is once again taken from Dictionary.com. I know some readers are justifiably wary of info from the internet; but I rely on this popular site for my pieces, regardless of my own sizable hard-copy collection; for the record, that site’s definitions are largely drawn from the more reputable and traditional dictionaries, including those used throughout this particular article.
See you here again soon.
