I only finished the As before coming back to comment: it’s an interesting list, but some words are certainly more deserving of seeing greater uptake than others. I question the presence of quite a number of entries, some for being quite pedestrian and quotidian, others for being milquetoast, and a handful for being way too archaic or downright alien - if they’re not in any standard dictionary (online or offline) are you just being a word snob if you use them?
One that surprised me is “agog” - I know it well, but I have literally only seen it as “agog with …” with the blank often being “excitement,” but now I learned that that’s a superfluous use of words, as agog already means just that.
But all that said, it’s a fun list. Thanks for sharing it!
I dunno, I'd rather start with words that are rare but that other people will know; if nobody understands you, how useful can they be? (Edit: In fairness, an unknown word could have value, but it feels like pushing the line between being clever and egotistical)
More accurately, synonymous with recent US Presidential debate.
Civil debate, people take turns and listen to each other; Anecdoche. everybody talks at once, nobody listens.
I've been a reader | writer | speaker of commonwealth English for decades, this has the feel of a list of words less familiar to American English speakers; there are a few words I've not come across - most might feature in an episode of Have I Got News for You (panel programm that rips and riffs on contemporary UK news events) or other chatty talkfests.
Anhedonia (Inability to feel pleasure) can be paired with other words like Musical Anhedonia - Inability to feel pleasure from music. I know this one because I’ve never had an emotional response to any music and wondered if there was a name for it.
No comment other than I’m very happy to see this from my alma mater on the front page of HN. I hesitate to say it’s a woefully underrated school, but I’m nevertheless proud of it.
Piffle. I myself use many of these words on a daily basis.
Seriously though if you want a read something by an author who really went for it and used maybe 75-85% of this list, get a copy of the Gormenghast series of books by Mervyn Peake. Just don’t come blaming me afterwards that you lost a chunk of your time.
The thing with lists like this, with words you've never seen or heard before, is the worry you're not saying them correctly. This list could be enriched with sounds showing how they are pronounced correctly.
If the word is so rare, there’s a very good chance the listener hasn’t heard it spoken either. Think of it as your opportunity to seed a pronunciation that you like.
(The nice and frustrating thing about English is that ultimately there are no rules. There’s no Academy sitting on a throne deciding how billions of English users speak and write — but on the flip side, nobody can fix the catastrophic spelling of this language either.)
It would be great to categorise this list by origin language.
It seems like a third each are just relatively modern French or Latin words pronounced in an English manner; of little interest to people who know Roman languages, but then there are the remaining third of “real” English words which seems to come out of a mirror world and are delightful! Mogshade, mollycoddle, mugwump, …
What it lacks is some context/flavor. Does the word sound British or American? Does it sound old-fashioned? funny? sarcastic? As a non-native English speaker, with many of these words – even if I knew their meaning – I can't really tell without further research,
“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” - Stephen King
If I have to look a word up in a dictionary that is often the fault of the writer, too.
Word lists like this are gatekeeping understanding. What’s more fun are those words used by some groups a lot, but not widely known. I was reminded of this when walking down a road in London and seeing a TfL sign that read “This is a temporary bus stop in use whilst repairs are made to the nearby permanent bus stop”. Most non-Brits have never used or heard the word “whilst”, and yet it’s used all the time in the U.K.
There are more fun words out there too for which no English translations exist, but we should totally make mainstream English. I won’t list as there are so, so many… glad hygge is doing well in the U.K. though.
I know what Stephen King is saying here, but I disagree with your stance. I have read books that I need a dictionary with me to read them, and there are definitely words that, like in this list, deserve a wider use, but have very few spaces where they can be used properly.
There's a great line in Patricia Lockwood's recent DFW essay where she says "He makes people feel they are in real possession of the word ‘volute’, that their vast untapped icebergs of vocabulary and perceptual detritus are readily available to them."
Words don't fall out of use by accident, I'd say most words get the level of usage that they rightfully deserve. Every word on that list has a more widely understood alternative that people commonly use instead. The primary purpose of language is facilitate communication, and using words that most people don't understand works against that goal. Alternatively you're free to use language in service of your own curiosity of obscure words, or perhaps just to showcase your own superior vocabulary to other people. But don't be surprised if that makes you a less effective communicator.
Of course they do. Unless you're suggesting that there's some kind of deep state conspiracy to alter the English language one word at a time.
>and using words that most people don't understand works against that goal
Most people don't speak much English at all. Should everyone stop using all but the most common thousand words? Most native speakers aren't experts in any particular field. Should all technical writing spend dozens of words to imprecisely replace each bit of specific jargon? Should no one ever coin a new term simply because it won't already be in wide use?
> Unless you're suggesting that there's some kind of deep state conspiracy to alter the English language one word at a time.
Not at all. There’s an entirely democratic process used to decide which words are commonly used an understood, everybody simply chooses for themselves what words are useful for them to include in their vocabulary.
> Most people don't speak much English at all.
I wasn’t specifically talking about English. My comments would apply to any non-dead language.
Regarding the rest of your comment, people modify languages all the time. They invent new words or bring old ones into use (or stop using old ones), and whether they survive depends entirely upon how popular they are within the culture. This isn’t specific to the broader English speaking culture either, subcultures have their own vocabularies whether they are technical subcultures, or some music subculture, or zoomer meme culture… they all invent vocabularies to suit their communication needs.
A better title for this page would be “a list of (mostly) discarded words that I (we?) like”. In regards to how effective these words are at facilitating communication, I see no argument presented here for why they get less recognition or use than they deserve. Because most English speakers wouldn’t understand most of these words, and using a word that somebody doesn’t understand is always going to be a less effective way of communicating with them than using a word that they do (and all of the words I saw on that list have actually widely understood alternatives).
Just the other day I introduced an non-native English speaking friend to the word myopic. You'd think "short-sighted" would win out as the clearer term, but myopic consistently beats it on Google Trends. I would expect a writer to alternate between them if they needed to repeat the concept and wanted to clearscribe.
I think the quote is emphasizing that writing isn't about meticulously picking out words, but first and foremost about telling an interesting story. Editing, rewriting, looking up words can be done later.
The point is to use the words that your readers will understand and that express your ideas the clearest. If you assume that your readers are somewhat similar to yourself (often reasonable), then you having to look up words means that your readers likely will have to as well.
Good writing is about expressing and transferring ideas. It is not supposed to be intellectual masturbation, though some may treat it as such.
> Good writing is about expressing and transferring ideas.
Not everything is a scientific paper. Good writing can also be art. There's a reason why Shakespeare wrote his 18th sonnet and not just "I think you're very beautiful".
Shakespeare had an exceptionally large vocabulary. He constantly used words his audience / readers didn't understand. And that's okay with you, because he was "expressing and transferring ideas". Except that it's not okay with you, because he didn't "use the words that [his] readers will understand and that express [his] ideas the clearest".
The idea a non-fiction text such as a scientific paper wants to express is (mainly) empirical.
The idea a fiction text such as Shakespeare's works wants to express is (mainly) emotional.
The exact meaning of words is more important in the former case than the latter, though not unimportant in the latter.
Shakespeare is one of the biggest outliers when it comes to reach as a function of complexity of language, and I don't think that generalizing from that specific anecdote is useful, especially as pertains to modern writers. I wouldn't advise any new writers to imitate Shakespeare if they want to be published today.
> I wouldn't advise any new writers to imitate Shakespeare if they want to be published today.
It's very easy to get published today, I just got published and so did you.
But sure, your advice is probably good if you are concerned mainly with commercial success. I would venture to guess, though, that most great, enduring writing comes from something inside the writer that they feel they have to express, rather than from looking outside themselves for the right "product-market fit." Some writers find a simple, lapidary style, others prefer more ornate language. Both can be great and I don't think we should call one right and one wrong.
I'm not sure how people learn how to write or read without using a dictionary and/or Thesaurus like this.
The more I think about it, I'm not sure how language would even develop in the first place if this were true.
The way I learned to write was by scouring the related words in the Thesaurus to find the closest word to convey the feeling I had.
Isn't every new word learned and invented using a similar process?
I'm just imagining the first ancient human inventing a word for "wolf" and another member of the tribe silently thinking to themselves that this overly intellectual showoff is just gatekeeping, but sadly can't express his thoughts without physicaly lashing out.
There’s nothing wrong with using less common words. Using those words in the wrong context is.
Having a wide vocabulary is like having a well stocked tool box, you take out the most approximate tool for the job.
English is such a hodgepodge of languages and so with such a multitude of ways to express the same idea, that it is a shame to not use that full range where appropriate.
Expecting everyone to speak at and express themselves at the lowest common denominator feels like gate keeping to understanding personally.
It is good to use a large vocabulary with precision. But what does precision require? Your audience needs to understand your words. Emotions are best described in the simple and direct language that they respond to. Therefore, simple language is usually best.
Many exceptions exist. Jargon should be used in a professional context. Archaic language helps to set stories in the past. Your point may be enjoying the complexity of speech. For example, Terry Pratchett would not be Terry Pratchett without excessive footnotes. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun was loved in part for words like those in https://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Obsc....
But exceptions are exceptions because they are exceptional. Most of what we say is not exceptional.
You say that expressing yourself in simple language "feels like gate keeping to understanding personally."
I find the opposite. Complex language often hides muddled thinking. It takes work to clarify my thoughts into simple language. Once I have done so, my understanding becomes more precise. Therefore my thinking has been improved by trying to speak simply.
Rare words should really only be used when they add value significant enough to counter their rareness. If there is a common word which is almost exactly the same in meaning then it should be used.
Especially in technical writing. Something like “the flange of a train wheel”, while flange is an uncommon word you may have to look up, you’ll be left knowing exactly what I’m talking about in a way that generic terms wouldn’t.
I find it delightful learning new words as I read different authors. I've expanded my vocabulary so much in the last few years reading slightly older books which use words which have fallen slightly out of common use. Words like sinecure, estovers, usufruct. Without learning from reading I don't know how I would come across these useful little tidbits. In fact I think that's how I've learned every word I know.
"With dictionaries, I spend a great deal more time looking up words I know than words I have never heard of—at least ninety-nine to one. The dictionary definitions of words you are trying to replace are far more likely to help you out than a scattershot wad from a thesaurus. If you use the dictionary after the thesaurus, the thesaurus will not hurt you."
These are "words that deserve wider use". If this site is successful then some of these words become popular, and eventually people don't need to look them up anymore.
I think those "rules" are a bit harsh, the gist of those is that as a writer you shouldn't force yourself to use difficult words if they don't fit or you don't understand them.
Doesn't your comment contradict itself? If I'm British (which I am) and I write in a way that some reasonable bar of educated British adult can understand me, as you've said yourself that doesn't necessarily mean that my American audience will not need a dictionary or to phone a friend for some words. I've gone global, and so I'm a failure?
It's kind of telling that King, whose writing nobody has ever accused of being high art, is saying this. Don't get me wrong, I like King, but using obscure words is a valid artistic choice.
Stephen King is trying to sell millions of books to many people so I understand why he would say this and mean it.
But I don’t think it applies everywhere, or even where I operate.
I want to communicate clearly. So using a precise word is valuable.
I, and many people I interact with, actually like looking up words and learning things. So it’s a feature not a bug to learn a new word when reading someone’s message.
Of course not everyone is the same, so it boils down to “know your audience.”
Stephen King writes pulpy, accessible fiction. I don't have context for the quote, but it's probably in the context of horror writing. Even if not, he's not the beginning and end of all writerly advice. He's just one guy. Smart and successful, but singular.
There are as many styles and motivations as there are writers. All are inherently valid. Whether they serve specific goals is a separate consideration. If you want to write horror like Stephen King, listen to Stephen King until you develop your own voice.
> “This is a temporary bus stop in use whilst repairs are made to the nearby permanent bus stop”. Most non-Brits have never used or heard the word “whilst”, and yet it’s used all the time in the U.K.
This feels like it would still mean the exact same thing if "while" were used instead of "whilst". I have no idea if there's some subtle difference in British English or if they're just synonyms with very close spelling to each other, but it doesn't strike me as particularly profound.
The problem with that statement is variance in taste, education, and ambiguity in the real world. Stephen King is making the classic mistake of an introvert projecting a blanket statement based on the mistaken pretense of a uniform vocabulary. There is no such thing. Average Americans have a vocab is about ~43k words, but they aren't the same subset of words or the same number. Furthermore, the vocabular size of the individual is variable up to a 99.99% confidence upper limit that stretches to around 200k.
Although it's fairly certain most Americans won't understand "cyberdisinhibitionism", "consanguineous", "antidisestablishmentarianism", or "insouciance" without additional context, some people's "~50k innate concepts" can receive an adjuvant through performative, logorrheic elucidation. The idiom "a word to the wise" implies the property that sharper instruments require less explanation to make the connection, while most others need a little more assistance.
And there are multilingual people who engage in loaning and coining words. Furthermore, the question of counting colloquialisms like "hangry" muddies the water.
So there is no clever rule except to write to the anticipated audience be it a PhD dissertation in cosmology, an article for "The Atlantic", or a children's bedtime stories for 8-year-olds.
Nice list. Mildly surprised to see some terms in there that I thought were in common usage.
Also, the word "Absquatulate" ("to discreetly leave a gathering or party without informing the host") may be obscure, but I'd argue that's because it was replaced by the term "Irish goodbye".
119 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 2367 ms ] threadOne that surprised me is “agog” - I know it well, but I have literally only seen it as “agog with …” with the blank often being “excitement,” but now I learned that that’s a superfluous use of words, as agog already means just that.
But all that said, it’s a fun list. Thanks for sharing it!
I've never seen it used that way; I've only seen it used like "They were all agog at x..."
There are some very useful words in this list, but I kinda wish they were ordered by some metric for usefulness rather than alfabetically.
I guess ordering them by popularity would kinda defeat the purpose though...
Civil debate, people take turns and listen to each other; Anecdoche. everybody talks at once, nobody listens.
I've been a reader | writer | speaker of commonwealth English for decades, this has the feel of a list of words less familiar to American English speakers; there are a few words I've not come across - most might feature in an episode of Have I Got News for You (panel programm that rips and riffs on contemporary UK news events) or other chatty talkfests.
About 10% of the list are actively used. Rest are stuffy.
Seriously though if you want a read something by an author who really went for it and used maybe 75-85% of this list, get a copy of the Gormenghast series of books by Mervyn Peake. Just don’t come blaming me afterwards that you lost a chunk of your time.
Now all I need is to know how to pronounce it
Edit:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agelast
Aj - eh - last
One who never laughs
(The nice and frustrating thing about English is that ultimately there are no rules. There’s no Academy sitting on a throne deciding how billions of English users speak and write — but on the flip side, nobody can fix the catastrophic spelling of this language either.)
The rest of us will have more fun.
It seems like a third each are just relatively modern French or Latin words pronounced in an English manner; of little interest to people who know Roman languages, but then there are the remaining third of “real” English words which seems to come out of a mirror world and are delightful! Mogshade, mollycoddle, mugwump, …
captious
kăp′shəs
adjective
1. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults.
2. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument.
No, I didn't read the whole thing that far, I just scrolled around.
What it lacks is some context/flavor. Does the word sound British or American? Does it sound old-fashioned? funny? sarcastic? As a non-native English speaker, with many of these words – even if I knew their meaning – I can't really tell without further research,
If I have to look a word up in a dictionary that is often the fault of the writer, too.
Word lists like this are gatekeeping understanding. What’s more fun are those words used by some groups a lot, but not widely known. I was reminded of this when walking down a road in London and seeing a TfL sign that read “This is a temporary bus stop in use whilst repairs are made to the nearby permanent bus stop”. Most non-Brits have never used or heard the word “whilst”, and yet it’s used all the time in the U.K.
There are more fun words out there too for which no English translations exist, but we should totally make mainstream English. I won’t list as there are so, so many… glad hygge is doing well in the U.K. though.
>If I have to look a word up in a dictionary that is often the fault of the writer, too.
And when should I freeze my vocabulary and declare that all the words I haven't yet memorized are worthless? At the age of seven? Perhaps twelve?
We have always been at war with David Foster Wallace.
Genius. My hat, Sir.
Of course they do. Unless you're suggesting that there's some kind of deep state conspiracy to alter the English language one word at a time.
>and using words that most people don't understand works against that goal
Most people don't speak much English at all. Should everyone stop using all but the most common thousand words? Most native speakers aren't experts in any particular field. Should all technical writing spend dozens of words to imprecisely replace each bit of specific jargon? Should no one ever coin a new term simply because it won't already be in wide use?
Not at all. There’s an entirely democratic process used to decide which words are commonly used an understood, everybody simply chooses for themselves what words are useful for them to include in their vocabulary.
> Most people don't speak much English at all.
I wasn’t specifically talking about English. My comments would apply to any non-dead language.
Regarding the rest of your comment, people modify languages all the time. They invent new words or bring old ones into use (or stop using old ones), and whether they survive depends entirely upon how popular they are within the culture. This isn’t specific to the broader English speaking culture either, subcultures have their own vocabularies whether they are technical subcultures, or some music subculture, or zoomer meme culture… they all invent vocabularies to suit their communication needs.
A better title for this page would be “a list of (mostly) discarded words that I (we?) like”. In regards to how effective these words are at facilitating communication, I see no argument presented here for why they get less recognition or use than they deserve. Because most English speakers wouldn’t understand most of these words, and using a word that somebody doesn’t understand is always going to be a less effective way of communicating with them than using a word that they do (and all of the words I saw on that list have actually widely understood alternatives).
> entirely democratic process
Yup. Language change theory. Via emergent consensus, the most democratic process.
Good writing is about expressing and transferring ideas. It is not supposed to be intellectual masturbation, though some may treat it as such.
Not everything is a scientific paper. Good writing can also be art. There's a reason why Shakespeare wrote his 18th sonnet and not just "I think you're very beautiful".
I didn't say it was. I said that writing is about expressing transferring ideas.
>Good writing can also be art.
True. And good art is about... expressing and transferring ideas.
The idea a fiction text such as Shakespeare's works wants to express is (mainly) emotional.
The exact meaning of words is more important in the former case than the latter, though not unimportant in the latter.
Shakespeare is one of the biggest outliers when it comes to reach as a function of complexity of language, and I don't think that generalizing from that specific anecdote is useful, especially as pertains to modern writers. I wouldn't advise any new writers to imitate Shakespeare if they want to be published today.
It's very easy to get published today, I just got published and so did you.
But sure, your advice is probably good if you are concerned mainly with commercial success. I would venture to guess, though, that most great, enduring writing comes from something inside the writer that they feel they have to express, rather than from looking outside themselves for the right "product-market fit." Some writers find a simple, lapidary style, others prefer more ornate language. Both can be great and I don't think we should call one right and one wrong.
The more I think about it, I'm not sure how language would even develop in the first place if this were true.
The way I learned to write was by scouring the related words in the Thesaurus to find the closest word to convey the feeling I had.
Isn't every new word learned and invented using a similar process?
I'm just imagining the first ancient human inventing a word for "wolf" and another member of the tribe silently thinking to themselves that this overly intellectual showoff is just gatekeeping, but sadly can't express his thoughts without physicaly lashing out.
Having a wide vocabulary is like having a well stocked tool box, you take out the most approximate tool for the job.
English is such a hodgepodge of languages and so with such a multitude of ways to express the same idea, that it is a shame to not use that full range where appropriate.
Expecting everyone to speak at and express themselves at the lowest common denominator feels like gate keeping to understanding personally.
Many exceptions exist. Jargon should be used in a professional context. Archaic language helps to set stories in the past. Your point may be enjoying the complexity of speech. For example, Terry Pratchett would not be Terry Pratchett without excessive footnotes. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun was loved in part for words like those in https://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Obsc....
But exceptions are exceptions because they are exceptional. Most of what we say is not exceptional.
You say that expressing yourself in simple language "feels like gate keeping to understanding personally."
I find the opposite. Complex language often hides muddled thinking. It takes work to clarify my thoughts into simple language. Once I have done so, my understanding becomes more precise. Therefore my thinking has been improved by trying to speak simply.
Especially in technical writing. Something like “the flange of a train wheel”, while flange is an uncommon word you may have to look up, you’ll be left knowing exactly what I’m talking about in a way that generic terms wouldn’t.
John McPhee, Draft No. 4
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/draft-no-4
However, as a writer, you can use rare words if you give enough contextual hints.
For example: "His personality was itself a gamble. You could never predict his famous bouts of bliss. Beware mercurial people like that."
It's kind of telling that King, whose writing nobody has ever accused of being high art, is saying this. Don't get me wrong, I like King, but using obscure words is a valid artistic choice.
Right, and no musician should use any notes from outside the pentatonic scale.
This sounds like Bill Gates "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
I suspect that the unstated preface of King's aphorism was, "If you want to maximize book sales".
But I don’t think it applies everywhere, or even where I operate.
I want to communicate clearly. So using a precise word is valuable.
I, and many people I interact with, actually like looking up words and learning things. So it’s a feature not a bug to learn a new word when reading someone’s message.
Of course not everyone is the same, so it boils down to “know your audience.”
There are as many styles and motivations as there are writers. All are inherently valid. Whether they serve specific goals is a separate consideration. If you want to write horror like Stephen King, listen to Stephen King until you develop your own voice.
This feels like it would still mean the exact same thing if "while" were used instead of "whilst". I have no idea if there's some subtle difference in British English or if they're just synonyms with very close spelling to each other, but it doesn't strike me as particularly profound.
Although it's fairly certain most Americans won't understand "cyberdisinhibitionism", "consanguineous", "antidisestablishmentarianism", or "insouciance" without additional context, some people's "~50k innate concepts" can receive an adjuvant through performative, logorrheic elucidation. The idiom "a word to the wise" implies the property that sharper instruments require less explanation to make the connection, while most others need a little more assistance.
And there are multilingual people who engage in loaning and coining words. Furthermore, the question of counting colloquialisms like "hangry" muddies the water.
So there is no clever rule except to write to the anticipated audience be it a PhD dissertation in cosmology, an article for "The Atlantic", or a children's bedtime stories for 8-year-olds.
Also, the word "Absquatulate" ("to discreetly leave a gathering or party without informing the host") may be obscure, but I'd argue that's because it was replaced by the term "Irish goodbye".