A few weeks ago I asked my friends on social media if they had a favorite word that no one seems to use anymore—and the response was fast and furious (I should make a dozen or so movies about it, right?). While there were far too many replies to list them all, here is a list of some of my favorites (and the person(s) who mentioned each), followed by the one word that got the most mentions and “hear, hears.”
assignation (Kristena Mears)
astonish (Nick Harrison)
bamboozle (Sharon Kopf)
brouhaha (Linda Gilden)
cacophony (Molly Jo Realy)
cheroot (Lisa Kibler)
chivalry (Peggy Derr Follrod)
confounded (Gary Fearon)
discombobulated (Diane Viere)
diversion (Sharon Autry)
eschew (Craig Stoker)
flabbergasted (Karen Bender)
flibbertigibbet (Sharon Kopf)
fortnight (Scott Strissel)
frisky (Tez Brooks)
gobsmacked (Dawn Heatwole, Ronie Kendig)
groovy (Pam Zollman, Candy Westbrook, Jerry Eldred)
intuit (Bill Patterson)
jolly (Robin Prince Monroe)
kerfuffle (Sharon Kopf, Lauren Monico-Crews)
lickspittle (Bob Hostetler)
Lilliputian (Julie Patrick-Barnhill)
lollygag (Judy DuCharme, A. E. Schwartz)
meretricious (Craig Stoker)
patootie (Cindy Huff, Daphne Woodall)
penultimate (Sarah Thomas)
persnickety (Marilyn Turk)
pervade (Misty Simco)
plethora (Joshua Masters, Rachel McDaniel)
practicable (Craig von Buseck)
pshaw (Jeanne Gowen Dennis)
recalcitrant (Roberta Brosius)
reckon (Rebekah Dorris)
reprobate (Donna Mumma)
sequester (Chris Storm)
shall (Bob McLaughlin, Don Hostetler)
shan’t (Don Hostetler)
smug (Tez Brooks)
stalwart (Mary Connealy)
verdant (Marilyn Turk)
whilst (Jenn Discher)
yonder (Gail Wofford Cartee)
And the winner, mentioned first by Pam Halter and seconded or repeated by several others: vex.
Thank you to everyone for playing, and join us next time on “Forgotten Words We Ought to Revive.”
Real Reasons Some Books are Rejected
Well I reckon I’m plum flabbergasted. Thanks for putting mine on the list! Groovy!
I shan’t be smug about gobsmacking the recalcitrant ogre during our kerfuffle because he was a persnickety reprobate…
I reckon this plethora of jolly, groovy words will astonish any recalcitrant reprobate smug enough to eschew their use. However…. (continue until all words are used)
LOL! As a wordsmith, I love it. I gave myself a little vocabulary test. Did pretty well ?
How about my favorite words: whippersnappers and nincompoops. ?
Did I miss the previous post? And why didn’t anyone think of rapscallion? We have plenty of them around.
OK, this gives me an idea for a new book…William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon go on a climbing trip together in the Himalayas, and in a fit of pique over actually writing The Bard’s plays and getting no credit, Bacon pushes Shakespeare into a deep crevasse.
Hundreds of years later, Shakespeare is found and revived, but since no one can understand what he’s saying apart from a few English-sounding words, he’s assumed to be a Sherpa and attains a position herding yaks in a small Nepalese village…where, inspired by his hairy new quardaped colleagues, he pens a pair of songs. Discovered by a trekking American literary agent, Shakespeare consents to be represented.
And the rest is history, with the chart-topping “Yakety Yak (Don’t Talk Back)” and “Wooly Bully”.
Shakespeare, meanwhile and tragi-comedically, meets a meet end, with a fell fall from a precipice, and his blood the multitudinous snows incarnadines, making the white one red.
Wow. Think I just pegged the Lame-O-Meter.
I missed the instigating post, but reckon I found several words I still use in the list. How about a new list: words which don’t exist but should. The primary entrant should be “unforgiveness,” which many of us write about. It isn’t in the dictionary!
I’d go with “supercilious popinjay.”
Supercilious: full of contempt and arrogance
Popinjay: vain and conceited
I used these words in “The Three Sixes” to describe the dean of students at Yale University.
Some of these are like old familiar friends. Fun to read them. Love it!
Great list! Though I would love it even more if my name was spelled right. 🙂 Still, there are quite a few here that I haven’t forgotten & use whenever possible.
Speaking of forgotten words, my sister told me “perhaps” is an old word that people don’t use anymore. Is that true? I hope not … because I use it all the time!
#ILoveWords
Several of those words are everyday words for me – so I guess they must still be commonplace in the UK as I was born and raised in England: flabbergasted, fortnight, gobsmacked, penultimate, pervade, plethora, reckon, shall, shan’t, smug, yonder – I still use some of the other words from time to time
What great words! I love them all. One of my favorites is gobbledygook.
Agree with the earlier comment that several of these are everyday words for me on this side of the Atlantic, but otherwise a ‘splendid’ idea.
I think the best thing about writing is to catch the reader with an element of surprise in this way. It helps to keep readers on their toes, and stops the ad-nauseam of repeating the same words over and over again on the author’s end too!
Incidentally, just noticed that ‘ad-nauseam’ seems to be another that should be resurrected.
Sigh. Beautiful words. Logophiles of the world unite!
Ha, I tried to convince my family to name our new puppy (back in 2015) Kerfuffle. Only got one taker, Princess Leia Freyja won out. But I still think that Kerfuffle would make an excellent name for a Newfoundland.
Kristen, I’m with you…Kerfuffle would have been perfect.
Though lately we’ve chosen expedient names, such as the Labrador named…wait for it…Labby, it was not always thus.
Witness PITunia JezeBULL, and another Pit who delighted in the name Jolly Tulip (he was a boy).
And wherever did the word Jolly wander off to, except for said dog and Jolly Time popcorn? I want it back!
ha! Great post, Bob. Love these.
Don’t forget:
Copasetic
Louse
Nincompoop
Quietus – dead
For my noir:
Tomato (hot chick) which in NY is pronounced tamata
Gams (legs, particularly nice legs on that tomato)
Bohica – which I will not mention what it means
Jalopy – aw, ya’ll know that one.
Nose candy – cocaine
Gin Joint – bar
Lead – bullet
Piece – gun
Chicago overcoat – buried body in concrete
…and I’ll leave ya’ll with that
Claire, this reminds me of a scene in a book, using another word for pistol, ‘gat’.
A PI opened a drawer in a perp’s room, and saw a .45 Automatic and a pair of smaller .25 autos.
“Oh, look…the gat had gittens.”
Yes, I love these … especially copacetic. It’s a lovely word.
These are great words. The problem with using them in fiction is that unless an erudite character is wielding them in dialogue, they come across as “writtenese” and tend to draw the reader’s attention away from the action and toward the author. I might implement these by having my smarter characters speak more like the smarty-pants they are.
How did “plethora” not get on the list?!
LOVE “penultimate”!!! A grad school professor used that word and got me to using it too!
Or “paucity” and “dearth”?
Love this list! A few of my personal additions would include capricious, petrichor (I was thrilled to discover that there’s a word for my favorite scent in the world: that of rain), plume, vanquish, alacrity, scourge, abyss, illustrious… the list continues.
This is great. I call my girl cat “cutie patootie” and I even used p’shaw in one of my picture books! Ha! Yeah, well, the situation called for it. 😉
And I used vex (and some of the variations) in my fantasy novel.
Such fun!
Diverting, indeed. I find my curiosity piqued by the image of a forsaken structure positioned above your copy. An abandoned ligne de Metro? The never to be entered (by this person) tunnel originating in Chicago, ferreting its way under Lake Michigan? Please quell my nagging inquisitiveness.
I regularly use several of these words. Does that make me behind everyone else or leading a trend?
I would hope you were leading a trend. 🙂
Don’t know why, but I’m fascinated with the photo you chose for this post. So I’m curious why and how you chose it. I want a connection.
Well, I don’t choose the photos (the boss does), but the photo (from a stock photo subscription service) evokes something that was once valued and serviceable but is now old and abandoned. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
Interesting job for a boss. I like your story, Bob, for it makes a good connection with the topic.