The day after April Fool’s Day. I hope you all escaped without getting fooled twice.
You know what W Bush said about getting fooled.
Anyway. Here’s something that sounds like I’m fooling. But I’m not. I collect weird words. I know. Most people collect dolls or glass figurines. However, my collections include rocks and this. Weird words.
Yes. I pick up weird words every time I see them. So here are a few to think about today.
Comflogisticate
Comflogisticate is a verb meaning “to utterly confuse someone” or “to embarrass or somehow show a person up.”
Who would do such a thing? Well. It seems our world is full of people who comflogisticate.
This good word was coined in the early 1800s as part of a faddy trend for inventing new nonsense words with a little Latin-sounding pizazz. Similar words that showed up around that time included flusticate (“to confuse”), conflabberate (“to upset”), and bamblustercate (used to mean “to embarrass,” “to confuse.”)
Thunder-plump
A thunder-plump is a heavy and sudden rainstorm. With Spring coming on like it is, we are liable to have lots of thunder-plumps. Hopefully, they will be kind thunder-plumps. I don’t like the bad ones. I think the distant cousin to this would be the thunder-dump. And hail storms would be thunder-clumps.
Kittle-pitchering
I need this word. You see, in 18th-century English, kittle-pitchering was a word for the method of stopping someone from telling a long and boring story. When you would kittle-pitch, you would stop them by constantly interrupting them with questions and contradictory statements.
Where the word comes from is a mystery, but kittle or kittlish, which dates to the 16th century, means “ticklish” or “annoying.” So, perhaps, the thing here is that the constant stream of interruptions we make is difficult for the story-teller to deal with.
Bishop and Bishop’s-finger
It sounds like these words are derived from clergymen. But they are different than the mainstream definition. It seems that the molten pool of wax that forms around the flame of a candle is called the “bishop.” How about that? And. A bishop’s-finger is a fingerpost, or one of those forked signposts you see on street corners that point in multiple directions. These two definitions couldn’t be further apart.
So where did these words come from? Bishops (and other high-ranking clergymen, for that matter) were often made the butt of jokes about pious hypocrisy. So. These words allude to the Bishop’s supposed propensity for double standards.
The signpost points to the right way to go but never actually goes that way itself. And. While the pool of wax around a candle sits far enough from the flame to avoid being burned up, it is just close enough to take its heat and light.
So there you have it. A few funky words from you from my foolish little collection.
And now, I’ll quit fooling around.
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“A collection is a kind of time machine. It is a way of holding on to the past and remembering it, even when everything else around you changes.” — Samuel Fod
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“The essence of a collection is not just the objects, but the stories they tell.” — J. Houser
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“Collecting is the pursuit of a feeling, not an object.” — Elizabeth Walker
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Bishop’s-finger. Which way do we go? And so much more.
