Jan and John Maggs Antiques

Word Play

by Karen Bourgaize

It’s great being a librarian.  A library is one of the few places you can stumble across a volume like Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words. I happened upon Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary in the library stacks one day, and, intrigued by the title, leafed through it.  My eyes fell first on fustilugs, surely an excellent word, whatever its meaning (a fat, unwieldy person).  Nearby was frotteur, a woman who gets her kicks by rubbing against people in crowds.  Another delightful word, and I was hooked.  The book jacket revealed that one Mrs. Josefa Heifetz Byrne, concert pianist, composer and outcast from Radcliffe, spent the bulk of the 1960s pouring over some seventy dictionaries and culling words she found to be unusual, obscure, or preposterous.  Her research included dictionaries of law, civil engineering, foreign phrases, music, psychiatry, word origins, the occult, jazz, mathematics, antiquities, dirty words, underworld lingo, university wit, and more, out of which she selected some six thousand entries that particularly tickled her.

The introduction to the volume was penned by her spouse and editor, Mr. Byrne, who champions her efforts in rescuing word gems from obscurity.  His enthusiasm leads him to contend that a word not found in either a common desk dictionary or Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary is not a word worth having at one’s fingertips.  He applauds her willingness to brave the naughty words and the messy topics and is proud of her accomplishment, “a peculiar feat of compulsive lexicography.” As he refers to his wife only in the relational and formal address, Mrs. Byrne, one wonders if he titled her book as well.

I read Mrs. Byrne cover to cover, and there was barely a page that didn’t induce a chuckle or hoot, a groan or a grimace.  Mrs. Byrne’s inclusions were, of course, utterly subjective.  She was apparently fascinated by the many vehicles for fortunetelling, and included some sixty-five examples.  Fears, manias, hatreds and insanities are heavily represented, as are colorful and dubious physical conditions and afflictions.  Religion comes up frequently, and animals, animal parts, and animal sounds.  Gems from the dictionary fairly begged to be categorized.  The result is a classification of my favorite words, culled from Mrs. Byrne’s favorite words, which were culled from seventy collections.  From here, you’ll cull your own favorites, ad absurdum.

Physical Afflictions, Attributes, and Conditions

Mrs. Byrne was intrigued with words for the body’s physical condition, mostly unfortunate, and included a host of them in her collection.  Roughly in order from head to toe, one may be pointy-headed (acrocephalic), or have no brains (excerebrose).  A dandruff problem will leave you scurfy or furfuraceous.  You may suffer from piloerection (hair standing on end) or poliosis (premature graying of the hair), shedding of the eyelashes (deplumation) or be excessively large-eared (macrotous).  Regarding the complexion, you may have bubukles (red pimples) or more generally be palpuliferous (pimply).  You may enjoy osphresophilia, an inordinate love for smells, or be macrosmatic (have a supersensitive nose.)  The xanthodont (someone with yellow teeth) may as a consequence be a dentiloquist (someone who speaks through closed teeth).  This is preferable to being agomphious or edentate, having no teeth at all.  If you suffer from bad breath (ozostomatic or saprostomous), your friends will wish you were a dentiloquist.  The stentorophonous person speaks in an abnormally loud voice, and one with the common cold may exhibit stridor, a whistling wheeze due to respiratory blockage.

The armpit area is bound to be problematic.  Your cacidrosis (smelly sweat) may give you hircismus or tragomaschalia (stinky armpits).  Regarding digestion, you may suffer from collywobbles (pain or looseness in the bowels), be ventripotent (fat bellied or gluttonous), or, on hopefully rare occasions, vomit fire (be ignivomous).

Below the waist, a lot can go wrong.  The monorchid male has only one testicle, and the xeronisus sufferer is unable to orgasm.  The steatopygous person is fatty-assed, and if dasypygal, those fat buttocks are also hairy.  You can suffer from proctalgia or rectalgia, a pain in the ass.  If you are weak in the loins, you are elumbated, and on a bad day may suffer tenemus, a painful but ineffectual attempt to urinate or defecate.

On the other hand, you may be envied, if you are callipygian (have shapely buttocks), or mentulate (well-hung).

Further south, if you are bowlegged or knockkneed, you are valgus.  Large ankles make one scaurous.  The person with large feet is sciapodous, and if the feet are smelly, he also has podobromhidrosis.  If those feet are involuntarily walking faster and faster, that is festination.

Miscellaneous conditions found widely include mancinism (left-handedness), and obdormition, the numbness felt by a limb “asleep” due to pressure on a nerve.  Less common would be paramimia, the pathological misuse of gestures, vanillism, a type of dermatitis from handling raw vanilla, and the dreaded modifier pulicious…..abounding with fleas.  We can only hope that we and our close associates don’t suffer too many of these afflictions, or at least not all at once, nor all on one person.

Sex and Love

Sex and love find lively representation in Mrs. Byrne’s list.  Some terms seem to fall into the “relationship” category, while other might fairly be called perversions.  While I acknowledge that the categories are not mutually exclusive, I have for simplicity nonetheless made two, and you are free to reassign words between them as you see fit.

Relationships

In the early blush of lust or love, a couple will experience clinomania, the excessive desire to stay in bed.  They are lovertine, addicted to lovemaking.  They are likely to exhibit agastopia, the admiration of a particular part of another’s body, and will dedicate themselves to philematology, the study of kissing.  One or the other may emulate a kamichi, the horned screamer (oh, wait, wrong category- it’s a bird.)

Time will pass, and tensions will arise.  One partner may be a lapling, one who enjoys sitting in women’s laps.  He may attempt suppalpation, the gaining of affection through caresses.  He will be rebuffed by the sarmassophobe, the woman who dislikes loveplay.  One or the other may resort to lalochezia, or talking dirty to relieve tension.

If things do not improve, the couple suffering from cagamosis, an unhappy marriage, might engage in apophasis, mentioning something by saying it won’t be mentioned, as in “we won’t mention his filthy habits,” or longanimity, silently suffering while plotting revenge.  A wife might experience maritodespotism, ruthless domination by a husband.  A partner might be unfaithful, a bedswerver.  One might be apopemptoclinic, inclined toward divorce, and if excessively so, pentapopemptic, or divorced five times.

Perversions

The person suffering from or reveling in apodysophilia experiences a feverish desire to undress.  The frotteur is a woman who gets her kicks by rubbing against people in crowds.  The gynotikolobomassophile can be found nibbling on womens’ earlobes, while the philopornist loves prostitutes.  The undinist associates water with erotica, grapholagnia is a more than passing interest in obscene pictures, pyrolagnia is sexual stimulation from watching fires, and scopolagnia is stimulation gained through voyeurism.  The threpterophiliac has a special fondness for female nurses.  The ecdysiast is a stripper, or more broadly, a shedder of skin.  The renifleur is stimulated by body odors such as sweat and urine.  Going further, we have urolagnia, sexual pleasure from urinating, and coprophilia, delicately defined by Mrs. Byrne as fancying feces.

In the animal line, there is zooerastia, sexual intercourse with an animal, or more specifically, blissom, copulation with a sheep.  The exuberant lover may troat, or cry out like a rutting buck.  The pygophilious (buttock-loving) lover may be inclined toward retrocopulation, fornicating from behind.  The lecheur is a licker.  Nympholepsy is a trance induced by erotic daydreams, and to unnun is to defrock a nun.

Fortunetelling

It’s human nature to wonder what the future holds, and the number and variety of things we put stock in is quite impressive.  The ending “mancy,” meaning divination or prophecy, figures in most words for fortunetelling.

Not surprisingly, natural phenomena are mined for clues.  We watch the sky and the sea, thunder and lightning (meteoromancy), wind (aeromancy), tides (hydromancy), and stars (sideromancy).  On land, we assess land contours (topomancy), and glean what we can from leaves (phyllomancy), pebbles (psephomancy), or stones (lithomancy), sticks (rhabdomancy) or wood (xylomancy).

Fire and smoke are common vehicles: we burn coal (anthromancy), or incense (knissomancy), or watch the flames of a fire (pyromancy), smoke (capromancy), ashes (spodomancy), or the flame of a torch (lampadomancy).

When we turn to food and grains for hints, we might use flour (aleuromancy), barley meal (alphitomancy), cake dough (crithomancy), salt (halomancy), wine (oenomancy), figs (sycomancy) or onions (cromnyomancy).

Various creatures have been employed for clues to the future, including a nursing baby (mazomancy), mice (myomancy), snakes (ophidiomancy), monsters (teratoscopy), and wild animals (theriomancy).  Creatures in dire straits may yield information, as in spasmatomancy, observation of a twitching body, or the disagreeable cephalonomancy, the boiling of an ass’s head.

Body parts and waste are inspected for information.  Fingernails may hold clues (onomancy), the soles of the feet (pedomancy), even shoulderblades (scapulomancy and spatulomancy) or what is seen over the shoulder (retromancy).  Urine is studied (urimancy), feces (scatomancy), and animal droppings (spatilomancy) are probed, and even fish offal (ichthyomancy) may be useful.

Certain physical processes are observed for clues. We draw conclusions from studying melted wax dropped in water (ceromancy), or molten lead dropped in water (molybdomancy), watching bubbles rising in a fountain (pegomancy), or simply staring at water in a basin (leconomancy).  Surely more creative than this last is tyromancy, watching cheese coagulate.

Apart from the physical world, we’ve turned to language and literature for help.  We study the letters in our names (onomatechny), or letters in general (nomancy). We analyze poetry (rhapsodomancy), passages from books (stichomancy), random Bible passages (bibliomancy), or even words written on tree bark (stigonomancy).

If none of these methods produces results, we might rely on dice (astragalomancy or cleromancy), mirrors (cataptromancy or enoptromancy), arrows (bellomancy), mathematics (arithmancy), weights (zygomancy), or a sieve suspended on shears (coscinomancy).  Ventriloquism (gastromancy) has been employed, and wheel tracks have been studied (trochomancy).  If you have the energy, try walking in a circle until you collapse (gyromancy), and if all else fails, I suggest xenomancy: study the first stranger that appears.

Unintelligible Definitions

Several entries tickled my fancy by virtue of their utterly unintelligible definitions.  Of course, the definitions are funny to me precisely due to my ignorance.  Perhaps you will be familiar with the words in the definitions, but the downside is, you won’t get the joke.

Capernoited is defined as lightly pifflecated, slightly nimptopsical.  Kalpa is one thousand yugas.  A liripoop is a liripipium.  Susulike pertains to a blind, platanistoid cetacean about eight feet long, with a snout.  And, there is the oxymoronic meraculous, slightly filthy.

Multiple Meanings

The word with multiple meanings is the envy of all other words.  Presumably, its chances for use are increased, and it certainly adds panache to your image to be complex, even unpredictable.  When the meanings are many, or striking in their lack of relation to one another, the word is even more attractive.  In this vein we have fumet, both deer shit and a flavoring agent for sauces.  The familiar remolade is a tangy sauce and also a veterinary ointment.  The leveret is both a mistress and a one year-old hare, while lampas is an elaborately woven textile, or mucous membrane congestion in horses.  Morris is both a larval conger eel, and a Moorish dance performed by a castanet-clacking man.  Merkin is any one of the following: female genitalia, false pubic hair (what?), or a mop used for swabbing cannons.  Megrim has meanings ranging from a migraine headache to the blues to dizziness to the lantern flounder.  The fizgig is any one of these: a flirtatious woman, a firework that hisses, a noisy toy, or a barbed harpoon.  Reeve has five meanings: a female sandpiper, an administrative official, a cattle pen, the foreman of a coal mine, or a string of onions.  Imagine the confusion if your spouse were to ask you to bring home a reeve for dinner.  Mort, at a mere four letters, has an impressive seven meanings: death, a trumpet blast announcing the death of animals in the hunt, skin removed from a diseased sheep, an iron coffin to discourage body snatchers, a large quantity, a three year-old salmon, and pork fat.  If its meanings were happier or easier to work into conversation, mort would have movie star status in the world of words.

Language and Literature

What a treat it is to encounter a word describing something you’ve never considered.  For me, such a word is barbaralalia, a speech impediment manifested when speaking a foreign tongue.  Aphtong refers to an unpronounced letter or letters (let’s just call it French).  The obsessive person might succumb to hadeharia, constant use of the word “hell”, or mytacism, use of the letter “m” to an extreme.  Embulalia is the insertion of nonsense into speech, and diacope or tmesis is the insertion of a word or phrase in the middle of another word for clarification, humor, or emphasis (as in, abso-gosh-darn-lutely).   The logolept (word maniac) may be lexiphanic (using pretentious language), or worse yet, a logastellus, a person whose enthusiasm for words outstrips his knowledge of them.  In this case, there is a high danger of verbicide, or word-murder by mangling or perversion.  If you find yourself out with a logolept, he will hopefully be a deinosophist, a skillful dinner conversationalist, and not employ verbigeration, the senseless reiteration of clichés, or obganiation, irritation by reiteration.  If so, you must exsibilate (reject with a hissing sound) and take your leave. 

The verbophobe fears or dislikes words, possibly to the point of logomisia, disgust for certain words.  A favorite of mine and a personal ambition is adoxography, good writing on a trivial subject.  The enthusiastic writer may experience chirospasm, writer’s cramp, while working on a parthenaid (an ode to a virgin). The opus might be a roman a clef, a novel whose characters are actual people thinly disguised, or a randle, a poem Irish schoolboys might recite by way of apology for farting at a classmate.  Meanwhile, the eisegete will be busy interpreting a text by inserting his own ideas as the author’s.

Music

The misodoctakleidist hates to practice the piano.  Travale is the sound produced by rubbing a tambourine with a wet thumb, while a sanglot is peevishly defined as a sobbing grace note inflicted on listeners by singers.  Melapoeia is the making up of melodies, while amusia is a complete inability to play or sing.  A bellonion is a mechanically operated musical instrument with twenty-four trumpets and two drums.  And, there is the pitiable opuscule, a small opus or insignificant work.

Animalia

Mrs. Byrne’s collection is rich with words pertaining to animals.  We’re all familiar with feline, canine and equine, but who knew that didine refers to the dodobird?  Other words meaning of or pertaining to a creature are anatine (duck-like), anserine (pertaining to a goose, or stupid), arctoid (bear-like), batrochoid (frog-like), caballine (horse-like), capric (goat-like), carcinomorphic (crab-like), cardophagous (like a donkey or other thistleivorous being), cercopithecan (monkey-like), chelonian (turtle-like), ciconine (stork-like), corvine (crow-like), crotaline (pertaining to a rattlesnake), erinaceous (pertaining to the hedgehog), hippocampine (seahorse-like), hircine (goat-like, especially in smell), leporine (hare-like), limaceous (pertaining to slugs), lyncean (of the lynx), ovine (sheep-like), pavonine (pertaining to the peacock, iridescent), pelargic (stork-like), psittaceous (parrot-like), pulicious (pertaining to or abounding with fleas), strignine (owl-like), suoid (hog-like), vespertilian (bat-like), and vespine (pertaining to wasps).

In the line of fur, there is the miniver, an ermine in winter white, the melodious modifier mollipilose, meaning downy or fluffy, woom (beaver fur), and mortling, wool taken from a dead sheep.  With regard to feathers, we have apterium (a bald spot on a bird), the jar-owl (the European goatsucker), the kamichi (the previously mentioned horned screamer from Indonesia), and the onomatopoetic whurring, the noise made by departing partridges.  A curpin is a fowl’s rump.  Other descriptors are boopic (ox-eyed), erostrate (beakless), fissilingual (having a forked tongue), lagotic (possessing rabbit-like ears), palmate and totipalmate (webfooted), ranivorous (frog-eating), and merdivorous (dung-eating).  Flews are the hanging upper lips of dogs such as bloodhounds, the ylespil is a hedgehog, the agoura is a crab-eating raccoon, and sarssat is the term for animals crowded around a hole in the arctic ice.  Fritinancy describes insect noises such as twittering and buzzing.  The savate animal fights with its feet, and the remiped uses its feet or legs as oars, as in certain crustaceans and insects.  A mease is a measure of five hundred herrings, myrmecoidy is the phenomenon of other insects mimicking ants, and the gentle loof is the inside of a cat’s paw.

Slang

Mrs. Byrne excluded most slang words from her dictionary, but a still-timely inclusion is boobocracy, government by boobs.  The masses are the booboisie.  A henhussy is a man who does housework, and a poor, southern, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is a peckerwood.  Several classic military slang words made the cut, in the line of snafu.  Roughly in escalating order, they are

SNAFU – Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

SUSFU – Situation Unchanged: Still Fucked Up

FUMTU – Fucked Up More Than Usual

JANFU – Joint Army and Navy Fuck-up

FUBB – Fucked Up Beyond Belief

TARFU – Things Are Really Fucked Up

FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

SAPFU – Surpassing All Previous Fuck-ups

Religion

Among the things people have chosen to worship are the ass (onolatry), manure (with its god, Sterculius), Shakespeare (bardolatry), and filth, dirt, smut or obscenity (aischrolatreia).  Sebastomania is more generally religious insanity.  The meritmonger is a salvation-seeker based on a reward for good deeds, while the cowan is a non-mason who infiltrates masonry to discover its secrets.  Adamatism means going naked for God  and minimifidianism is having almost no faith.  The pope may be dispoped (removed from popehood), intensely feared (papophobia), or dismissed as a popekin, a contemptuous reference to a little pope.  Other dismissive labels are godling, a puny or small-time god, and kingling, a small or petty king.  Clergy may parabolize (speak in parables), experience clerical stagefright called sacerdotophrenia, fight with fellow men and women of the cloth (hieromachy), or carry on with a parnel, a priest’s mistress.  Episcopicide is the killing of a bishop.  Impanation is the cannibalistic doctrine of baking Christ into a Eucharist cookie and yeuling refers to walking among fruit trees while praying for a good crop.  If all else fails, consider omphaloskepsis: meditation while contemplating one’s navel.

Insults

If you could use additions to your arsenal of insults, Mrs. Byrne has a few to suggest.  Fustilugs, as learned earlier, is a fat, unwieldy person.  A clinchpoop covers a lot of ground, meaning a lout, jerk, clod, boor, slob, boob, fathead or sap.  A momzer is an impossible person, a sponger, a liar, a troublemaker, or a humorless and unattractive person.  The patzer is a weak chess player.  (This insult will find more limited use, but could cut deeply at a MENSA convention.)  The swelp is a perennial complainer, and the smellfungus is a malcontent, a grumbler, a fault-finder.  The wantwit is, as you’d expect, a fool.

Shit

Mrs. Byrne does not shy away from shit.  We know that feces and animal droppings are used for fortunetelling in spatilomancy and scatomancy.  There is even a god of feces, Sterculius.  For some reason, otter dung has its own label, spraints.  To immerd is to cover with excrement, and to turdefy is to turn into a turd, though it is unclear whether the action refers to oneself or another.  If this section is disagreeable to you, this is the time to skip ahead.  Coprophilia means fancying feces in a sexual context, and fartleberries refers to excrement clinging to the hairs around the anus.

Anti-Sociabilities

A number of Mrs. Byrne’s inclusions seemed best grouped under the heading of anti-sociabilities, and range in their methods from farting to spitting to swearing to murder.  The xylophonist annoys others with frequent and noisy farts, although it seems either would suffice.  The sputative person is apt to spit and the spuricidical one is foul-mouthed.  To burke someone is to smother him in order to sell his body for dissection, so named for William Burke, a practitioner who did just that, and was in the end on the dissecting table himself after being tried and executed for burking.  Uxoricide is wife murder.  Pseudoautochiria is murder disguised as suicide, as opposed to pseudophonia, suicide disguised as murder.  Exophagy is cannibalism outside the tribe, which to tribe members would be preferable to endophagy, and frankly seems at the least like just common courtesy.   The passive anti-socialite indulges in epicaricacy, taking pleasure in others’ misfortunes, while the aggressive anti-socialite might be a breedbate, one looking for an argument.  The passive aggressive anti-socialite is stomachous, both obstinate and angry.  Thelymochy is a war between women and mendaciloquent pertains to lying as a fine art.  The malist operates under the theory that the world is mostly bad.  Overall, do not look forward to a rencounter with an anti-socialite, a sudden, unexpected and hostile meeting.  Farting and spitting may be the least of your worries.

Phobias, Manias, Hatreds, and Insanities

Phobias

Words pertaining to fears, manias, hatreds and insanities comprise a large proportion of Mrs. Byrne’s selections.  We’ll begin with phobias, many of which are familiar and commonly held, whether or not we know their names.  There were a number of surprises, for example, that there are words for fear of string (linonophobia), fear of being tickled by feathers (pteronophobia), fear of poetry (metrophobia) and fear of virgins (parthenophobia).  Regarding families, one may fear one’s relatives (syngenesophobia), or more particularly, one’s stepmother (novercaphobia), mother-in-law (pentheraphobia), or inlaws (soceraphobia).  Some fear crowds (ochlophobia) while others fear being alone (monophobia) or actually fear themselves (autophobia).  There are the run of the mill fears of natural phenomena such as thunderstorms (brontophobia), thunder (tonitrophobia), tornadoes (lilapsophobia), loud noises (ligyrophobia), fog (nebulaphobia), rain (ombrophobia or pluviophobia), darkness (scotophobia), or the sea (thalassophobia).  Regarding our bodies and minds, we might fear nudity (gymnophobia), body smells (bromidrosiphobia), exhaustion (kopophobia), pain (odynaphobia), pregnancy and childbirth (maiensiophobia or tocophobia), standing up (stasibasiphobia), being contagious (tapinophobia), or fear infestation by worms (helminthophobia).  We may have a fear of phobias (phobophobia), or of insanity (maniaphobia), or becoming mad (lyssophobia), or may fear having committed an imaginary crime (peccatophobia).

In the realm of religion, the pope may be feared (papophobia), or heaven (uranophobia), hell (stygiophobia), sin (hamartophobia), crucifixes (staurophobia), religious ceremony (teleophobia) or tombstones (placophobia). Among the animals we fear are snakes (ophidiophobia) and bees (melissophobia), mice (muriphobia) and lice (pediculophobia). 

Eating and food are fearful to some (sitophobia or cibophobia), who may well not contribute to the gene pool.  More cerebrally, we may fear justice (dikephobia) or learning (sopophobia), overworking (ponophobia) or poverty (peniaphobia), words in general (verbophobia) or hearing particular words (onomatophobia).  Strangers may elicit fears (xenophobia) and the teutophobe fears Germans or things German.  Narrow places may be worrisome (stenophobia), as well as decaying matter (septophobia) and dust (amathophobia).  The macrophobe fears long waits, the megalophobe, large things, and the taphephobe fears being buried alive.  The rhabdophobic fears punishment or criticism, the erythrophobe fears blushing or the color red, and the spectrophobe won’t look in mirrors.  The number thirteen is frightening to the triskadekaphobe, while wooden objects torment the xylophobe.  And, the siderodromophobic will not travel by train.

Manias

All manner of manias and compulsions have been identified and named. Mrs. Byrne included manias for possession: money (plutomania), furs (doramania), or buying things (oniomania).  Notable among the manias are mythomania, compulsively telling lies and believing them, and mazomania, a mania for breasts.  We may be manic about dancing (choreomania), jumping from heights (catapedamania), traveling (dromomania), attending funerals (tapophilia), archery (toxophily), or undergoing surgery (tomomania).  The logolept (word maniac) may be compelled to write verse (metromania) or love letters (eratographomania).  Lymacatexis is a neurotic preoccupation with dirt, while the rhytiscopic is preoccupied with facial wrinkles.  The trichotillomaniac pulls out his own hair, and a box of chalk is not safe with a hungry limomaniac.  The eleutheromaniac craves freedom, and the opodipsia sufferer cannot get enough juice.  Tarassis refers to male hysteria, and piblokto, manic depression in Eskimo women.  Witzelsucht may afflict any of us: a fragile emotional state characterized by feeble attempts at humor.

Hatreds

There is no shortage of named hatreds and aversions, and Mrs. Byrne includes a number of them.  Phalacrespia is aversion to bald men or baldness.  Misapodysis is hatred of undressing in front of someone, miserotia is aversion to sex, and misogamy, hatred of marriage.  The misocapnist cannot tolerate tobacco smoke, and the misodoctakleidist, who we met in the music section, still hates to practice the piano.  Misopedia is defined as hatred of children, especially one’s own, while the misotheist hates gods and the misoxenist, strangers.  The misopolemiac hates war and misarchist hates authority.  As a policy decision, the misoscopist loathes beauty, and the misosophist hates wisdom and may then also be a misologist, one who hates using the intellect in argument or discussion.  More broadly still, the misoneist hates anything new, while the misomaniac simplifies things by just hating everything.

Insanities

Fears, manias and hatreds are complemented by mental disorders I’ll term insanities. In several cases, the insanity is a person believing herself or himself to be an animal (zooanthropy).  More specifically, in cynanthropy, one believes himself a wolf, in boanthropy, an ox, in lycanthropy, a wolf, and in galeanthropy, one suffers from the delusion one has become a cat.  Self-perception is altered with regard to mental capacity in sophomania, the delusion of exceptional intelligence, and the entheomaniac believes himself divinely inspired, while the castrophrenic believes his thoughts are being stolen by enemies.  Limophoitos is insanity due to lack of food.  And then there is azygophrenia, surely a product of mid-century culture and language: the psychoneurosis of everyday unmarried life.

Drinking

With regard to drinking, popination means bar-hopping and a zythepsary is a brewery.  The galactophagist is a milk-drinker, while the ombibulous person will drink anything and everything to the point of becoming drunk, or nimptopsical.  In the extreme, ebriection results, a mental breakdown from too much boozing.

Jobs

In the line of unusual jobs, we have colporter, a traveling Bible salesman, and necrologist, an obituary writer.  The perissotomist is a knife-happy surgeon.  And, as proof that there is no rest for the weary, we have ushabti, a mummy-like figure entombed with a mummy for the purpose of doing certain farm chores in the next world.

Legalities

Legalities include essoin, an excuse given to explain not appearing in court, and flumen, which is the legal right to direct excess rainwater from one’s roof to the neighbor’s yard.  You will want to avoid scaphism, a Persian method of execution by covering a person in honey and letting sun and insects finish the job.

Shapes and Spatial Relationships

Various shapes are named, such as napiform, or turnip-shaped.  We also have xiphoid (sword-shaped), squaliform (shark-shaped), and the tricky-to-work-into-conversation scrotiform, or pouch-shaped.  With regard to spatial relationships, there is the logical apoop, or toward the back, and the descriptive agroof, flat on one’s face.  And the sporabola describes the parabolic path of a falling spore.

Oddities

In the sea of words Mrs. Byrne found unusual, obscure, or preposterous, some stand out to me as odder than others.  These I’ll term oddities, among which are cacophonophilist, a lover of harsh sounds, chasmophilous (nook- and cranny-loving), and dendrophilous, or loving trees so much as to live in them.  Haptodysphoria describes the unpleasant sensation felt by some people when touching peaches or cotton.  I was comforted to learn this word, which I believe may explain the aversive shiver I experience when touching suede.  Further oddities are skoptsy, meaning self-castration, and retromingent, or urinating backward.  Formication is the feeling that bugs are crawling on you.  And, there is groak, which is to silently watch people eating, hoping to be asked to join them.

Grossities

Inspired by dictionary study, I propose the word grossities to describe the likes of gleet, with no less than four distasteful definitions: slime, ooze or greasy filth; phlegm like that found in a hawk’s stomach; mucous discharge from the urethra; and a chronic inflammation of the nasal cavities.  Axunge is pig fat or goose grease.  Lant is stale urine used in manufacturing (but the products are not identified), and fartleberries is icky enough for a second mention.

Miscellanea

A number of excellent words that caught my attention did not lend themselves to categorization, and why should they?  The words stand on their own.

agniology- the study of ignorance

asteism- an ingeniously polite insult

axiopisty- the quality that makes something believable

dehorner- a rubbing alcohol addict

engastration- the stuffing of one bird inside another

errhine- sneeze-provoking

flacket- to rustle like a taffeta dress

foozle- to fumble, expecially in golf

infumate- to smoke, as a sturgeon

knickknackatory- a storehouse of knickknacks

lambative- a medicine to be licked

lagan- stuff thrown in the sea and marked with a buoy for later retrieval

limen- the borderline of awareness

ludicropathetic- both ludicrous and pathetic

moonglade- moonlight reflected on water

philoxenist- one who is happiest entertaining strangers

rep- formerly a dirty old woman, now, a dirty old man

sumpitan- in Borneo, a blowgun for poison darts

tittup- lively or restless behavior

whiskerino- a beard-growing contest

zomotherapy- treatment of tuberculosis by a diet of raw meat

zonesthesia- the feeling of wearing a tight girdle

zumbooruk- a small cannon fired from the back of a camel

Hooray for unusual, obscure and preposterous words!  They could use our help, though.  I suggest we all pick a few favorites and rescue them from obscurity, or what Mr. Byrne calls the slag-heap of language.  He, like Mrs. Byrne, has a sense of humor, and closes his introduction to the dictionary by apologizing for the ammunition the book will provide to bad writers.  Consider yourself warned.

Editor's note: If, having read Karen's scintillating account, you now feel that you must own your own copy, there are several listed on the ABE Books website. Use the link below:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?tn=mrs.+Byrne%27s&sts=t&y=7&x=58

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