Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.
We speak, by far, the language with the most words in it. The Germans manage to converse precisely, thank you, with something like a fourth or a fifth of our lexicon.
We have lots of words we do not use, and a few I could do without. Ampallung has now become an English word, but we could do without that word in all languages. (I was going to provide a link to an explanation of this, but everyone I found is too graphic.) It is a piercing through the penis. Everyone say “Ewwww.”
Some words we do not give their full and proper due. Coprolite, meaning a fossilized turd, is a word of which we could make much greater use. Start naming, to yourself only please, all the people you have known who are living coprolites.
But I still think some words are missing. We need a word for:
- That stuff, ragged, messing stuff, that is left when you tear a page out a spiral notebook. It is the bane of teachers. I required kids to cut off the ragged edge of such pages before they turned them in and to be careful not to drop that stuff, ragged, messing stuff around the room. I always wanted a word for it. I called it froo-froo, but that’s a stolen word. I used to hold contests to name that stuff, ragged, messing stuff. It never worked. My turkey-drawing contests worked but not that one.
- That stuff, stupid, cliched, never-dying stuff that gets sent to you over and over again in emails. Or at least between women. I have only rarely received such stuff, stupid, cliched, never-dying stuff from a male friend. My wife gets 4-5 a week, and everyone sending to her knows she does not like them and that I throw them all out before she opens her mail every 4-6 weeks.
- A tree standing alone isolated from other trees. Why, you are asking, do we need that word? I am not sure. I have just always wanted it. Any tree standing alone draws my eye, evokes some response from me.
Here are some solitary trees, uncharacteristically clumped together:
It is trees all alone in a field which have a power over me. I used to watch for the half dozen of them in the too-often-repeated drive from the Cities to Two Harbors. The only famous one of those is now gone, cut down by vandals, the Two Harbors Honking Tree, which was actually in Larsmont. This picture is by one of my very favorite students.
(We could use a word to describe the soul of the person who cut it down.)
Apparently in the right circumstance, I am not alone in being drawn to solitary trees. I have drawn many such trees. And my grand-daughter has my obsession. She draws this picture over and over again.
Share your ideas for words that should be added to or removed from the English language.
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. Very clever or cleaver post, Clyde. I think we might have some new additions to the Trail Baboon glossary by the end of the day. I could use a word that could replace the word “but” in some of my sentences. I think I over use this word and it isn’t always exactly the word I need, but I can’t think of a better word to use. I need a word that means “I was thinking this and that lead me to think of something else”.
OT I just took some time to listen to the video of Grazing in the Grass that Holly posted last night. Thanks a lot for that one Holly. It is great!
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Did you dig it?
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It was cool.
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Yeah…..
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Jim, I used to give me students Mr. Birkholz’s Official Cheat Sheet which they were allowed to use in all tests and encouraged to use in all their writing. It had things like brief trigger words to remind them of punctuation rules. One section had a list of subordinate conjunctions (which, because, who), prepositions, coordinate conjunctions (and, or, but, either/or, neither/nor) and then I had a list of “Coordination/continuation Expressions.” It’s that third list you want. I don’t have that cheat sheet anymore. Wish I did. I blended it from a number of books I had. But Jim try otherwise,furthermore, moreover, also (carefully), so (even more carefully), however,.
The top level math and physics teachers allowed their students to make their own cheat sheets. I bring up the cheat sheets because the kids used to make up funny names for them. One of my favorite was to call the three of them the Birkholz, the Sorensen, and the Goedel.
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Great idea those cheat sheets. Try to remember and reconfigure the list maybe enlist a past birkholzian scholar to assist
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Thanks for that list, Clyde. I should write those alternatives to but down some place and try using them. I do use however in place of but sometimes.
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nevertheless, additionally, bullets, 1) 2) First, Second, perhaps,
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i was told years ago and it stuck , that if you have a but in the middle of a sentance you can discard everything that went before the but. geeze it annoys my family when i say that after they throw a but at me.. but and in my opinion are two things i have eliminated form my vocabulary. my vocabulary is perfect in every respect but sometimes i have a little trouble with the truth..
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Is there a name for the snarl of stuff that happens on the end of your shoelace when the aglet comes off and makes it difficult to put the lace through that little tiny hole?
Is the fuzz in your belly button nameless that little reoccurring lint pebble?
The memory of a taste and smell should have a name
When a story or sequence comes to you complete in a dream it should have a name
All the nameless things in the universe should fall under a grouping which to date remains nameless
It’s very interesting Clyde that we have so many words. I would have thought other languages that have a hundred words for snow or love would have outdone us .
Coprolites…I will use that but likely not here unless referring to the foundations of a certain political parties building blocks and a few of their leaders.
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Congrats for knowing “aglet.” Make up the other one yourself. Most of the 250,000 to 350,000 words in English (hard to count you know. “Frog” has about a dozen meanings, some very similar. Is it one word, a dozen words, 8 words, 3 words?) are out of use or trade, job, life-style related.
Be back in a couple hours.
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The end of the shoelace might become a shaglet, from “shed” and “aglet”.
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🙂
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You can always tell if a person does crossword puzzles if they now “aglet” — it’s one of the words I didn’t know before I became a crossword fan.
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erie
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irie
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Kirie
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
“The Stratton Double.” This refers to sneezing in our allergy-prone family. We rarely issue forth a single sneeze. Rather, the usual is two in quick succession. So quick there is no opportunity to get your breath back, leaving the sneezer feeling as if the diaphragm is pressing up agaisnt the lungs. Sometimes we do a triple sneeze which is less common. The most I have done in a row without an incoming breath is five. The Stratton Quintet.
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That is amazing, Jacque. I’m intrigued by the different words people use when sneezing. My dad had a particularly violent sneeze that came out as WAAAAUGH-pa-SHOO! We had a springer spaniel who was sensitive to sneezes, and one sneeze from my father would terrify Yoyo like a bolt of lightning, causing him to flee the room. My own sneezes are longer and gentler, and they remind me of the gunshot noises we used to make when playing Cowboy and Indian, a sound that always had a ricochet in it. The sneeze is something like Ap-a-chooooooo! My mom would wrinkle her nose and say Chewie in such a gentle voice you wouldn’t know she had sneezed if you weren’t a member of the family.
I’m also fascinated by that weird sensation you get when you have a sneeze loaded and all set to fire, only it won’t quite come. Is there a word for that? At the risk of being indelicate, I’ll point out that the body can do two explosions like that, and each is capable of almost happening and then foxing around in a maddening fey manner.
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good observations and a good reason for the reintroduction of snuff
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Two memorable sneezes – my father had an elaborate hoo-diga-ha-diga-hee-diga ahead of a sneeze (quite fast). In study hall in high school, there was a student who stifled a sneeze with a loud “Kiki!”.
My college roommate would say “Bless you” before I completed my sneeze. It created the stifle effect noted by Steve. After a while, I couldn’t sneeze in her presence for 4 years.
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Not quite sure of the right word for this – perhaps extra-absence or countrapresence – that unique sense of both presence and loss when you want to reach out to someone no longer of this world. Like reaching to call your dad to tell him about something cool that happened, and then there is that pause where you realize you can’t because he hasn’t been where you could call him by phone for a couple of years. Or hearing a friend sing a song he wrote and he sounds so alive and real and then there is that pause where you realize you will can only now hear that voice as a recording. Or working on a project and remembering some long-forgotten piece of advice you got from a friend who could not possibly be with you now in a physical sense, but still feels like she is there somehow.
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That’s wonderful, Anna. Nice descriptions.
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Might that be “spiritalgia”?
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flash
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Ewwww.
Excellent post, Clyde. I’ve always thought we need a word for the snow blobs that freeze into your hair and along the bottom of your pants when you’re out in the snow – especially is you’re using a snow blower. Snowbules? And with a teenager in the house, I’ve always needed a succinct word for the messy hair blop that she always forgets to wipe from the tub drain. Tressmess? Hankglop?
I saw a funny site yesterday about the difference between kitty-cornered, katty-cornered, and kattywumpus. http://mentalfloss.com/article/48745/it-kitty-corner-katty-corner-or-kattywumpus
I love the word kattywumpus. And kerfuffle.
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Kerfuffle is an excellent word. And just fun to say (so is kattywumpus).
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Marella Cuthbert loved the word kerfuffle. Anne (with an E) gave her lots of chances to use it.
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Oh yeah, those are all fun.
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We had a really interesting snow phenomenon last weekend. The wind was so strong that it was able to blow really wet snow around. The snow started clumping after a while, and parking lots, streets, and lawns were dotted with little clumps of snow, some as high as 8 inches, some smaller, that made it look as though someone had strewn snowballs all over the place. I wonder if there is a name for those snow clumps.
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dakota snow pies
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Thought-provoking, Clyde. Germans manage with a vastly shorter list of words because their language allows them to slap words together with a little Super Glue to make long new words that never before existed. Thus if you need to speak of a telephone list of participants, you create the word “Fernsprecherteilnehmerverzeichnis.” Now, me, I prefer a language that has a fabulous collection of special words for the use of those who know them.
It is fun to have special words when you are dishing out contempt, which is a common use of language. If I call you “scrofulous,” you might not know what I really mean, but you can tell I wasn’t complimenting you!
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On the other hand, if I were to say you were pulcritudinous, you might take it the wrong way. Or callipygous…
I’ve always been fond of the term syzygy- if for no other reason, for its abcedarian novelty. But the word that, for me, seems most unlike itself is pantechnicon. It sounds so Dr. Who-ish when in reality it’s nothing more than a moving van.
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Pulchritudinous…
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Morning–
I once asked a medical doctor what the medical term for a ‘booger’ was. He said it’s still called mucus. But ‘dried mucus’ equals a booger? Oh, I don’t like that. And there doesn’t appear to be a Latin word for mucus. I don’t know, ‘snot rock’?
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I’ve always liked the phrase “booger mining.”
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My father had quite the vocabulary. One word he liked to use was catarrh which I always thought meant snot but now that I look it up, I find it means “inflammation of a mucous membrane especially the human nose”. Anyway he used it enough that we three kiddos took it to mean snot. Baby sister mis-remembered one time and called it “banjo” (from the sound of the word) and that became our family name for it.
Great post, Clyde. Baboons are already going to town with it.
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ben there are people waiting to see the doctor and you are asking for the medical name of booger. no wonder our cost of medical insurance is so high. i am sure he doesnt gat asked that type of question very often by the nature of his answer. some people know how to have fun and others become doctors. doctors who are boring and humorless. is there a word for that? midica borissimo perhaps
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I have, more than once (when making a new appointment at a clinic/office I haven’t been to before), asked which of the doctor’s has the best sense of humor. The folks who schedule doctor appointments always think this is a bizarre way to choose a doctor. I think it’s the best way — no sense of humor is the worst!
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VS, you are right on. My doc is pretty good; he’s got a twinkle in his eye and he knows now to expect the unexpected from me.
For example ‘Diarrhea’; are we talking consistency or frequency??
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I was very sad when my dentist, who used to sing and joke as he worked, moved to a different clinic. The hygienists said that not everyone enjoyed his light-hearted approach to dentistry.
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Supralibramoritis: too many books you don’t want to give up.
I have mentioned before my downsizing of travel books and some showed an interest. I will be taking 60 or so up to 1/2 Price Books and would expect to get about $25-30. Travel books get a bit higher price than other books I have brought up. I would be willing to drop them off with someone and the club could pick through them. I am going to be bringing some driftwood to Linda in the same trip, so a lot is possible.
A rather loose definition of travel in some cases. Lots of polar exploration stuff. Some classic stuff: Sara Wheeler, Bruce Chatwin, Theroux, Colin Thurbron (or however you spell it. Covers much of the world.
Let me know. It is just as easy for me to take them in to the store, but some of you might like a cheaper price on books, assuming we can work out an easy way.
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ill take em and give you better than 25-30 for the bunch ‘ either leave them with linda and ill pick em up from her or cmon over to eden prairie for a cup of coffee.
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Great post today, Clyde. Fun and thought-provoking stuff!
I like “ergnoggin” for the little nameless parts and pieces in something mechanical that you’ve taken apart and are struggling to put back together. My brother the engineer seems to know the proper names for all of these little hoo-hoos and he makes me feel silly when I don’t know the correct terminology. I have the same response in an auto mechanic shop when I tell them that I don’t know the name of the ergnoggin that is malfunctioning, but would they please find it and fix it for me? I have a plastic container on the back seat of my car that is filled with ergnoggins left over from the repair of my front left headlight. I’m not sure if I’ll need them because I’m not entirely sure what they are so I keep them in case they’re needed. I know I’ll forget what they’re for if they’re not in the car, so there they are on the back seat. When people ask me what’s in the container I tell them it’s the little ergnoggins from the headlight. They look at me like I’m slightly addled. Maybe I am.
Disclaimer: I can’t claim to be the originator of “ergnoggin.” I remember hearing it somewhere, sometime, from someone. It made me giggle and it stuck.
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My family as a child made a joke of collecting words for the unnamed thing or name we could not remember: odds and ends, thingamujig, dohicky, whachayamacallit, bobbit, smick-smack, jiggle.
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Ergnoggin is new to me. I use some of Clyde’s plus thingamabob and whoseywhatsis (pronounced who-Z-whatsis – can’t be sure how it’s spelled)
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Proposed new names for a divorced partners (I don’t like “ex” as it sounds like they are dead): “Hasbeend” – a better name for an ex-husband as in he “has been my husband”. I suppose the female equivalent would be “werefe” as in she “were my wife”
And for the marriage: For a man who has a woman standing up for him … the “Best Broad”. And for a woman who has a man standing up for her … “Dude of Honor”.
The ragged messy stuff left after tearing a page is “Officoffal” as in “Office generated Offal”.
The forwarded stuff sent from girlfriends in “SPIRL” as in “SPAM from the girls”
Cheers
Anita Hall Frost
8035 W 86th Street Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
952/944-6131 (home)
763/764-3212 (work)
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Anita – wonderful additions. I especially like the offioffal. Here on the Trail we’ve wrestled with the ex- issue before — we came up with “wasband” and “erstwife”.
Welcome to the Trail!!!!
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Good offerings. Thanks,. Newboon.
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Or Neuboon or Niewboon or neoboon.
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anita you left your fax and email address off the post. i will over to give you a hearty welcome from the baboon welcome wagon next time im near bush lake.welcome to the trail.
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Welcome to this friendly blog, Anita. Looks like you fit right in.
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I once came across a book that contained words that the author thought should be added to the English language. The one that has stuck with me is:
Carperpetuation – the act of moving a bit of debris that the vacuum has been refusing to pick up to another spot on the carpet and trying again to pick it up with the vacuum. Been there.
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Does anybody remember Sniglets, those books by Rich Hall? He was a master at coming up with new words. I had a one-a-day Sniglet calendar once — this was one of my favorites and I had it up on the fridge for a while.
Ellacelleration: The mistaken belief that repeatedly pressing the elevator button will make it go faster.
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That’s the book!
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Here’s another one that is right up my alley
Bovilexia (bo vil eks’ e uh) – n. The uncontrollable urge to lean out the car window and yell “Moo!” every time you pass a cow.
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Heehee.
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I used to wonder about those strings you can sometimes peel off the side of a banana after it’s been peeled. Then I discovered they’re called “phloem bundles”. But I am still wondering whether there is a name for that little spike at the very bottom of the banana which usually stays in the peel but sometimes breaks off if the banana is very ripe.
I would call that stuff from spiral notebook paper “notebook fringe”.
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Xylem and phloem. Right out of grade 10 biology and introductory botany. Two lovely lovely words I had forgotten.
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Sisiphean (often accompanied by “task”)-those of you who were as distracted by Greek mythology while trying to write reports in elementary school will recall that Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large rock up a hill. He would almost make the summit, and the thing would roll back to the bottom.
I love that word, I don’t so much love it when it happens to me.
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’bout time for this one, I do believe.
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oh yeah!!!
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So good to hear it!
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Germans may have fewer words, but they agglutinate them (there’s a word for you), making long cumbersome compounds out of several base words. When translating from German to English, a text will be somewhat shorter, depending on the nature of the content. Simplicity in vocabulary, it would seem, doesn’t lead to efficiency in communication.
Coprolite might seem like an obscure word, but it wouldn’t be if you were a paleontologist. It’s just a technical term seldom used by the non- technical.
Borrowing from a recent Trail, a lot of the suggestions for new words are portmanteaus- a lovely word in itself. The effluvia from spiral notebooks might be first cousin to hanging chads. Any suggestions for a graceful portmanteau of spiral + chads?
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What an intelligent post, Bill. But I see you did not read all of my posts on this thread. Oh, well, I don’t consider that a slight. (Steve sobs, chokes back a comment and wipes bitter tears from his eyes.:(
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but its way up there ^
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Steve, your comments are invariably intelligent and apt. As it happens, I began writing my response this morning and had to dash away, leaving it unfinished until this evening. I apologize for partially recapitulating your observations.
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As for words that could be removed from the language, I have one that I’d like to vote out. It’s not exactly a word, as I understand it – it’s a trademark. It’s the term for a real estate agent that is a member of the National Association of [trademarked name here]. This association insists that the word should always be capitalized and preferably have that little circled R following. It seems unnecessary and downright silly to me. Not only that, it’s routinely mispronounced. If you sound it out, it’s like real fur, except with a t instead of an f. But everyone wants to insert an extra syllable into it, so it turns into real-i-ter.
Real estate agent. Sure, it takes a little longer to say it. But what’s your hurry?
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