Grossly underused words
 

God, there are some words that are so good it's nearly criminal that they are used as infrequently as some others.

My favorite: Chucklehead. It's a great word to use when describing someone of mild intelligence, or just someone who gets on your nerves. A universal word for the universal person.

What are some of your favorites?

I love chucklehead. I think the reason it's insultingly effective is because it's used so rarely.

Off the top of my head, I think alacrity and celerity could be used a little more often. They mean basically the same thing: with great speed.

I really enjoy the term "mollycoddled", but I only hear it about once a year. It cheers me up every time, though.

Porchmonkey Pollyanna. There was a hardcore sorority ditz I knew of in college and I called her a "blathering pollyanna" (pollyanna is an incredibly optimistic person. This girl was sickeningly cheerful and very giggly; you could hit her upside the head with an aluminum bat, knocking out half of her teeth in the process, and she'd still show her teeth like Mr. Ed). To which she said "NO, MY NAME IS JUST ANNE."

I seriously facepalmed myself.

I like the word 'tentative'. Its another word for 'hesitant', but I think 'tentative' is the better of the two words. It just... FEELS more like the action. But I rarely, if ever, hear anyone else use it. Maybe that's just me though.

Also, 'augment'. Its just FUN to say. "I've augmented my savings by taking another job." Its FUN.

I love to insert the word "troglodyte" into sentences when referring to inept coworkers or people I generally dislike.

"If I ever see that troglodyte trying to edit my student sheets again without my expressed written permission, I swear to god Andy, I'm going to talk her into suicide by the end of the week. She's Catholic; it'll be easy."

I don't think it's an ACTUAL word, but I absolutely adore the term 'clusterfuck'. I rarely use it myself, but when I do [or hear it used], it's well worth it.

According to Urban Dictionary, it IS a word so I think you're in the clear.

Interesting. I didn't know it came from the military.

=D My professors started pulling from their vocabulary and I was so impressed with some of these that I'm now making it a point to insert into mine to confuse others even further:


emaciated - extremely thin
Note: will probably replace "waif"

aegis - shield/protection, to act under the shield/protection of someone

hegemony - preeminence of one group over others

I've always liked brobdingnagian (really, really big). Actually comes from the Brobdingnag giants from Part II of Gulliver's Travels and somehow entered the English language. If you've even seen Justice League Unlimited, The Question uses this word once to describe his hate for Luthor.

Also, hodgepodge, 'cause man is that ever fun to say!

As an army person I hear clusterfuck all the time, as well as other colourful words and phrases such as 'disappear into a red mist', 'dog' (referring to a food), 'digging with your eyelids', etc.

I have to agree 'augment' is a beautiful word, with references to music and linguistics. Luckily it hasn't been abused in drab corporate-speak - which bastardized 'roadmap', 'moving forward', 'we're committed to...', 'core', 'milestone'.

Among some of the words I'd like to see more often (off the top of my head), cantankerous, lacuna, augment, dictum, expunge, profligate.. there are a lot more, but I'm having a brain fart as of now.

Foible.

I first learned about its existence from a song, and it's been stuck in my head as a funny word to say. All I need to do now is actually remember to use the word in casual conversation. I think I've only successfully deployed it once.

macadamia, ga-ze-bo...

Catawampus is one of those words that people don't know is a real word. But it's so useful for certain situations... though I usually pronounce it the hick way, 'cattywompas'.

You should define it then so we can be both entertained and educated.

extant. It just means "existing" or "still in existence".

condign (deserved, appropriate) is the domain name I use for GFWiki, and I chose it because nobody ever uses that word. Except this guy.

Ersatz is a fantastic word and I use it all the time. It means "makeshift" or "substitute", usually implying that the replacement is, in some way, inferior to the original.

Having discovered that the small, metal strip had become wrenched, disconnected and now lost during the wash cycle, Steve placed a paperclip through the holes in the tooth-fastener and fashioned himself an ersatz zipper tab.

I was going to use ersatz, but Crash beat me to it. That's always been a favorite of mine.

Defenestrate is one that's always held a place in my heart but is rarely seen or heard, even when I hear of one's possessions being forcibly ejected through a window. I'm also rather fond of old euphemisms like jinkies or golly jeepers - they make me grin idiotically.

Also, ubiquitous and magnanimous - considering their definitions, you'd think they'd be used far more often.

I'm a big fan of cretin, capricious and niggling.

"You cretin!" yelled Joson, scolding his capricious subordinate through the radio. John shifted uneasily on the spot, helplessly possessed by a niggling - almost negligible - urge to kill the demons.

Asinine. It's a fair game insult on virtually every single board.

I have a friend who uses this word too much. I think he learned it and heard me say it once, and now he says it all the time. The worst part is he says it incorrectly. Like, something will be just plain dumb and he'll say "that's so fucking asinine." I get a chuckle but it gets old after a while.

...I just had to respond to this. Partly out of humor and just to let Identity know that he's not the only one who knows of this "song".

..Bulbous bouffant...

Well, on this note, I might as well let everyone else in on this amusing sketch, for those that don't know what we're referring to.

Anyways, I kinda liked using the word "madness". It sounds more mature and refined than 'crazy' or 'screwed up'. "This is madness" used to be something I'd say sometimes for a "this is crazy/messed up" line, and mind you, it was well before the movie 300 was around.

I can hardly even say 'madness' alone online anymore without being inundated by "THIS IS SPARTA!!". :(

Omnipotent. I just like the feel of that word. And I like how the "ni" is emphasised. Hell, any word with prefix omni- (omnipresent, omnivorous etc). Good thread, this one; I'll be sure to use certain words, such as chucklehead. (My favourite thus far.)

I used to think "evanescence" was a grossly-unused word. Do you know how much I hate the band for running the word through the shit-grinder?

One of my favorite words is lethologica. "The inability to remember a certain word."

I have frequent need to reference it. :(

I've always liked the word dilapidated and wish people would use it in angry rants more often.

Looky-loos. Because it basically explains itself.

I also like scintillate and luminous, especially if they're both used as compliments.

Couple of my favs...

Peripatetic. Means 'of, or relating to, the philosophy or teaching methods of Aristotle.' Dunno why I like it, may have something to do with those two plosive p's in the middle, along with fairly equally-spaced consonants...

Plenitude, meaning, 'the state of being full'. Apparently the author Tolkien quite liked the word pleni*l*une, meaning 'at the time of the full moon', which is probably what made me stumble across *plenitude* in the dictionary. Again, not really sure why, but I note it's chock full of juicy consonants. Hmm, maybe I should do a scientific study of my lexical aesthetic preferences someda...ah, but I digress...

Ran into obnubilate the other day cruising the deepest dankest corners of Usenet. Just a freakin' cool word. Means, basically, 'obscure'. And obscure it is, it wasn't even in my thick Webster's. Note that I found it in its adjectival form, with the stress on the 2nd syllable, obnubilate, but it also has a verbal form, obnubilate.

In the above mentioned post, I also found such lexical monstrosities as 'adoxography', 'witzelsucht', 'sanguivorous', 'deoppilate', 'malacissitate', 'obmutescence', 'jookeries', and 'hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian'. Good words all...but, for some reason, only 'obmutescence' really resonates with me.

Penultimately, if I may be allowed to 'toot my own (proverbial) horn', in my younger years I was a frequent competitor in spelling contests, getting as high as the precursor to the National Finals (I am a resident of the USA). My family and I used to try and trip each other up with various words, a favorite being 'antidisestablishmentarianism'.

Finally, for the people who like 'ersatz', my dad recently went back to grad school and used that word in one of his most recent essays (he's trying to get teaching certification). His prof commented 'Good word!'

Cunnilingus. Oral stimulation of the female genitalia. I almost never hear this word used, yet fellatio is thrown around like nobodies business. I try to use cunnilingus as much as possible.

Additionally analingus is used even less. It's a travesty.

Another word that's always amusing to hear is ululate or ululating. And it's fun to say, too. It's basically a high-pitched screaming. Sadly, I don't hear this word used NEARLY enough.

On a side note, I didn't even know analingus was a word. Nice.

Ululate makes me think of undulate, to move in a wavelike fashion. I tend to use that one whenever something needs to move back and forth in a portentous way.

Speaking of which, portentous is another good one. I always thought it was odd in that it could mean both ominous and favorable (i.e. a good or bad portent).

Muckrake is fun to say, but I hardly ever get to use it. It means to search for and/or uncover corruption and scandal, so there's always a need for it.

Another one I've been meaning to use more is unctuous, which I first saw in Sam & Max (a great vocab builder, by the way). It means greasy or unpleasantly polite, so there are scads of great uses. I guess scads is a fine word too.

Indubitably. It makes things sound quite incontrovertible.

Being from Newfoundland, we literally have our own vocabularly toward a variety of things. I would put some of those words in this topic but since the only dictionary they exist in is the Newfoundland dictionary, I'll try to find some better words.

I use the word Gallivanting quite a lot.

Gallivanting:

1.) To roam about in search of pleasure or amusement.
2.) To play around amorously; flirt.

These aren't exactly grossly underused, since there's hardly any need or point to using them (or they're used enough) but they are a couple of my favorite words.

Floccinaucinihilipilification, a word which no longer appears in most editions of the dictionary due to its extreme lack of usage and archaic roots, is by far one of the most fun to say and spell. It means, if I remember correctly, the evaluation of something as nothing; meaningless; of little to no worth; trivial. I once used it in a conversation, accusing the poor bastard of douchebaggery (also a favorite) and general floccinaucinihilipilification in regards to my opinion of a very important topic, and he stared at me blankly like his brain had just exploded. Then he told me to spell it and I did without skipping a beat.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is technically the longest word in the English language, is just a fancy medical term for black lung disease, but I love throwing that one at smokers and, far less frequently due to lack of opportunity, coal miners.

I also realized today that I love the words dongle, trepidation, and tomfoolery. Dongle is just a funny word, trepidation has always appealed to me more than its counterpart apprehension, and tomfoolery just gives such an excellent mental image of its meaning that I can't help but chuckle when I hear it.

Also, ravish - the verb, by itself. When used in context, it sounds rather sensual.

Wow, I thought hegemony is commonly used, but I guess it's only because I study social science. I would pick hegemoney instead.

Also, does abysmal counted as underused word? I think this word is even more powerful than miserable :p

I was actually wondering if someone would bring this up. I remember discovering this when I was young, [like, 7 or something] in a book about useless trivia. I've tossed it around too, but usually only when people say stupid shit like: "Oh, the longest word? Easy. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

Verisimilitude is another goodie that isn't used often. It means something appears plausible.

Another great word is ergo, Latin for therefore. Some people I know think it's a confusing word and is too big a word, but therefore is technically longer. Weird.

"Impaired." Nothing too complicated that people haven't already heard before. Although that may sound too formal for normal conversations. I tend to use medical language daily, so I sometimes find myself accidentally slipping that in with my non-medical major friends without even realizing I did so.