“Weird Words” is the name of this column — but I’m sure readers can tell that vocab isn’t the only off-the-wall aspect of these pieces; the writer has his eccentricities, too.
Chief among these is an apparent inability to finish any given set of weird words in one column; last month, for instance, I launched a study of oddball terms that won the 2026 Scripps Spelling Bee.
This is the fourth installment of that three-part series.
I tried to finish last time, but got stuck discussing tun/ton … and then A-I … and Wikipedia!
So here, at last, is a final batch from the tie-breaking run-off won by California teen Shrey Parikh:
Cashaw (kuh-SHAW, noun) – “A North American variety of pumpkin or squash” (Collins). Doesn’t seem too hard to spell — except that it’s a variant of the more common cushaw, which can in turn have its stress on the first syllable. While this seems like a Native American term, dictionary.com insists that its etymology is unknown.
Emeute (ae-MOOT, noun) – A synonym for “uprising” or “rebellion” (also Collins). Adapted from French, it has a pronunciation that’s all but impossible to render phonetically; the first syllable is the long-A of day, while the second has a vowel-sound similar to that in book and good.
Flaith (FLAH, noun) – “An Irish chief or noble of one of several grades holding rent-free land” (Merriam-Webster). And yes, the th is silent; the word rhymes with “ha” or “blah.”
Madoqua (muh-DOE-kwa, noun) – Synonym for “royal antelope” — a fascinating African species that stands only a foot high at the shoulders and is thus “one of the smallest ruminants”; the male has short, spiky horns (again, from Merriam-Webster).
Extra notes here:
– A ruminant is any animal that chews its cud — including cows of course, but also sheep, goats, elk, moose, giraffes and llamas.
– That word is related to ruminate — which means to think or ponder (that is, to bring it up again and chew it over).
– “Moose” is indeed the correct plural; you cannot say “mooses.” And for heaven’s sake don’t pluralize it like goose — unless your name is Mr. Jinks!
(Whoops — stepped in another rabbit-hole there!)
Paroemia (puh-REE-mee-ya, noun) – The venerable and exhaustive Collins gives this as an obsolete rhetorical term meaning “axiom” or “proverb.” Even dictionary.com doesn’t have this, but thinks I am misspelling the similarly obscure parosmia — “a disorder of the sense of smell, especially the perception of odors that are not present.” (Just to toss in one extra outlier.)
Taurokathapsia (taw-row-kuh-THAP-see-ya, noun) – Ancient Greek sport in which the contestant grasps the horns of a bull and somersaults over him; this has the Greek base for “bull” — as in the constellation Taurus, and the Spanish toro.
Zamenis (ZAH-muh-nuss, noun) – “A large genus of European and Asiatic colubrid snakes closely resembling and in some classifications including a black snake….” (Colubrid — pronounced KAHL-yuh-bred — is a large family of nonvenomous nope-ropes.)
As with many entries here, those last two definitions are from Merriam-Webster. In general, I like to spread my sources around among the dozens of reliable dictionaries on my shelf; but most of those don’t have any of these words.
I can’t imagine how young Parikh managed to spell them all correctly.
