2025, education, Mysteries, Words

Weird Words

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Vocabulary has always been a fun topic for me.  It started in the fifth grade when Mrs. McCracken offered extra credit if we found the week’s vocabulary words out and about in the real world (books, newspaper, etc.) 

I get an email every day with a new vocabulary word from a dictionary site.  I’d say that about 60% of the time, I know the word or can work it out based on its parts.  Nothing else, just a few seconds of each day.

But in the last couple of weeks I’ve come across two that not only did I not know, but I had to look up how they would be used in a sentence to make sense of them. 

Animadvert – to comment unfavorably or critically.  First recorded in 1630–40.  From the Latin animadvertere, meaning “to heed, censure;” combines animum, meaning “mind,” + advertere, meaning “to notice or advert¹.”   Here are two examples.  “The famous director was not afraid to animadvert on the lack of originality in modern filmmaking” and “The union leaders publicly animadverted on the company’s decision to cut wages, arguing it was retaliation”. 

Carpophagous – feed on fruit, fruit-eating.  First recorded in 1830–40.   Combines carpo-¹, meaning “fruit,” + -phagous, meaning “eating.”   Again, two examples.  “The carpophagous bat species are crucial for pollination as they feed on nectar and fruit” and “The carpophagous diet of the iguana primarily consists of fruits and leafy greens”. 

Both of these words strike me as not being too useful these days.  I suppose in biology circles you might eventually stumble across carpophagous but even having sentences for animadvert, I’m having trouble imagining anybody using it these days.  I could be wrong – but I don’t think so (Monk theme song…)

Any words you think the English language would be better off without?

44 thoughts on “Weird Words”

  1. I, too, delight in words, and I particularly enjoy taking them apart to figure out “how they mean what they mean.” A dozen years ago I was teaching undergraduates in Taiwan. It was a “college English” class, which I determined was to “make them unafraid of encountering an assigned English language text” in their future research and work. Every week, the first thing each person in the class had to do was to write 3 English words they had encountered on the board for me to explain. This also had them experience “being in front” and “writing on the board”.
    I would, in front of them, on the fly, using Taiwanese, divide the word into pieces and show them how the meanings came to be in the word.

    One guy, an adult student, came in one day with a single word of about 40 letters that stretched across the board. He had an evil glint in his eye. I had never seen that word before, but was able to “parse it out” on the spot, discovering that it was from a medical text and described some sort of lung condition. He and I both smiled.

    That kind of interaction is part of what I miss since retiring.

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        1. Yup. I see I left out the “t” in ultra.
          This is the word that replaced antidisestablishmentarianism as the go-to longest word.

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        2. It’s funny. If you google pneumomonomicroscopicultrasilicovolcanoconiosis, Oxford dictionaries calls it an invented word. What words aren’t invented?

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  3. I’m probably the last person to want to excise any words. Bring ‘em on, I say.

    The first time I encountered animadvert it was in the form “animadversion”. The funny thing is that I encountered it again the next day from a different reading, a sort of Baader-Meinhof experience. I guess that’s what can happen when you read from a lot of nineteenth century sources.

    Any time you see “phagous” as part of a word you can be sure it’s about eating. I don’t know that I would have recognized “carpo” as indicating fruit but I can say that carpophagy is not to be confused with coprophagy.

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  4. I don’t want to remove any words from potential usage. Like trees and plants, air and clean water, we need them all.

    I never heard ‘animadvert’ before, but I had heard ‘carpophagy.’

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  5. The classic when we were kids was antidisestablishmentarianism:
    “Antidisestablishmentarianism is a position that advocates that a state church (the “established church”) should continue to receive government patronage, rather than be disestablished (i.e., be separated from the state)…

    Antidisestablishmentarianism is also frequently noted as one of the longest non-scientific words in the English language.”

    I don’t suppose we need to get rid of it tho’ – it’s a concept that probably needs a name.

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    2. My dad liked teaching me weird things when I was really young. He taught me ‘antidisestablishmentarianism,’ ‘temporomandibular,’ and counting to 100 in Japanese.

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  6. I too get a word of the day, and the interesting ones I saved to a folder. But there are words that I know I’m never gonna use and then I just delete those.

    I appreciate the fact some languages have words for things that we don’t or that fit an emotion or a situation better. For example the Irish referring to a rainy day as being very “soft” out. That fits.

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      1. Usually they destroy mandalas after they are created but I seem to remember there’s one at the Institute displayed vertically. I don’t know how they fixed the sand in place.

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  9. Here is another one from this week: Sardanapalian
    [ sahr-dn-uh-peyl-yuhn ] adjective. excessively luxurious or sensual.

    Hard to imagine too much luxuriousness!

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    1. I can’t remember what I was reading at the time but I was presented with the word “perruquier”. That was one I couldn’t parse and had to look up. Turns out it’s a wigmaker. I see spellcheck doesn’t like it either.

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  12. I love the English language, but I would be happy to never hear the word “leverage” again. It’s one of the most overused bits of jargon in the corporate world. A former coworker added it to practically every sentence, to the point where it was meaningless.

    I suppose it’s not the word’s fault, but the people who misuse/overuse it.

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  14. A word I keep hearing/reading lately is recrudescence. It refers to a sudden new appearance and growth, especially of something dangerous and unpleasant. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before until now. Zeitgeist!

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