Last week, Webb’s Weird Words trotted out one of our standard oddball vocabulary lists — this one including succedanea (suck-suh-DAY-nee-yuh). The plural form of a noun meaning “substitute” — especially a replacement medicine — it’s perhaps best known from a brief appearance in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy Waiting for Godot.

Now more than 70 years old, that existential classic is currently enjoying a Broadway revival with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter (of “Bill & Ted” fame). What’s more, Beckett — a linguistic master who translated his own play into English from French (En attendant Godot) — has laced his text with dandy puns, weird vocab and double entendres; and that’s all the more remarkable considering how wordplay doesn’t carry well from one language to another.

So in honor of that dramatic revival — running through Jan. 4 — Weird Words dedicates its next few columns to terms from the play.

For this first batch, let’s start with the passage containing succedanea. It’s a an effusive, 700-word monologue that can only be described as a case of logorrhea. (Yes, that is a thing — combining the Greek log- [“word”] and diarrhea; I’ll let you figure out what it means!) With no punctuation, the long speech offers considerable nonsense and repetition — along with these rarities and lesser-knowns:

Alimentation (al-uh-men-TAY-shun, noun) – The noun-form of our more familiar alimentary, this is essentially nutrition or nourishment — though it can mean general maintenance or support; it also carries the less-common sense of adding mass to a glacier (Dictionary.com).

Anthropometry (an-thruh-PAH-meh-tree, noun) – “The study of human body measurements especially on a comparative basis” (Merriam-Webster).

In typical fashion, the character Lucky mispronounces this word, putting an extra “popo” in the middle — showing Beckett’s fondness for scatological humor. (Lucky’s stuttering version of the term is preceded by Acacacacademy. Get it? — caca and popo, har har; trust me, other puns in the passage are too suggestive for a family newspaper!)

The original word contains the common Greek base anthropo-, meaning “human” (as in anthropology, anthropomorphic, etc.).

Apathia (uh-PAY-thee-ya, noun) – I’m guessing on pronunciation here, because this is a truly rare term. More commonly spelled apatheia, it’s a Greek word for a state of mind in which one is freed from, or not disturbed by, strong feelings and passions. Yes, it’s related to apathy — but more important, it’s one of Godot’s many oddball terms that connects to the play’s themes of pain, tedium, hope and hopelessness. Kinda like our next entry — which clearly relates to the speech that contains it:

Aphasia (uh-FAY-zyuh, noun) – “Partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language” (American Heritage); generally, it’s a medical condition caused by disease, injury or brain damage — though in Lucky’s case, God only knows.

Athambia (uh-THAM-bee-ya, noun) – Once again, I’m guessing on how to say this seldom-used word; I had to go to “AI Overview” for a definition: Greek term meaning “imperturbability” — or, the state of being calm and difficult to upset. Interestingly, AI also tells us that it was “famously used by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot.”

Camogie (kuh-MOE-gee [with a hard “G,” as in geese], noun) – “An Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women” (Wikipedia). It’s from camog or cammock, essentially a curved stick often used for field hockey in Ireland.

That’s about it for actual words in Lucky’s speech — though in a list of sports including camogie, he also names conating; like other items in the monologue, that’s not a word. In this case, it’s not likely a respelling of connate; that means “existing from birth” and thus can’t possibly qualify as a sport — except perhaps in the mind of Samuel Beckett.

A good online version of Lucky’s lunatic linguistic avalanche is available on YouTube; just type in lucky’s speech waiting for godot, and it should come up first (the one that’s 5:21 in length). That’s from Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s excellent 2001 TV film of the play — which is also available free in its entirety on YouTube! Or you can go into Manhattan for Messrs. Reeve and Winter.

Just don’t wait too long….