nutation
n. the action of nodding, esp. as a sign of drowsiness
Search Results for: in a word
In a Word
bafflegab
n. official or professional jargon which confuses more than it clarifies; gobbledegook
This is such a useful word that its coiner actually received an award. Milton A. Smith, assistant general counsel for the American Chamber of Commerce, invented it to describe one of the incomprehensible price orders published by the Chamber’s Office of Price Stabilization. His comment, published in the Chamber’s weekly publication Washington Report in January 1952, was lauded in an editorial in the Bellingham [Wash.] Herald, which sponsored a plaque.
Smith said he’d considered several words to describe the OPS order’s combination of “incomprehensibility, ambiguity, verbosity, and complexity.” He’d rejected legalfusion, legalprate, gabalia, and burobabble.
At the award presentation, he was asked to define his word briefly. He answered, “Multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies.”
In a Word
emptitious
adj. susceptible to bribery
chantage
n. extortion; blackmail
luition
n. payment of a ransom
quomodocunquizing
adj. that makes money in any possible way
In a Word
surbate
v. to make one’s feet sore
In a Word
tsundoku
n. the practice of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them
In a Word
astriferous
adj. bearing or containing stars; starry
stelliferous
adj. filled with stars; starry
In a Word
crepuscule
n. twilight
(Stanislaw Straszkiewicz, Zmierzch, 1910.)
In a Word
bibliobibuli
n. the sort of people who read too much
In a Word
peisant
adj. having great weight
dissight
n. an unsightly object, an eyesore
bonification
n. the action of making something good or better
subrident
adj. accompanied by a smile
In 1959, a cement mixer rolled off a road in northeastern Oklahoma. The owners retrieved the truck, but the mixer held tons of concrete and was too heavy to move. Plans to bury it on the spot were eventually abandoned, and the disused mixer lay for decades beside Winganon Road. In 2008 Heather Thomas and her husband, Barry, decided to celebrate their fifth anniversary by finally attending to the matter — they disguised in as a space capsule.
(Thanks, Colin.)
In a Word
thalassic
adj. of or relating to seas and oceans
dégringolade
n. a quick deterioration or breakdown, as of a situation or circumstance
supersalient
adj. leaping upon
sperate
adj. hoped for; not hopeless
Shipwreck With a Surviving Dog, by the Danish artist Carl Bille (1815–1898).