I love vocabulary and English has a lot – the Websters Third Dictionary lists over 470,000 words, although many are obsolete. Of course, most native speakers know roughly 20,000 words and commonly use around 8,000.

Old-English-VocabularyAccording to Andrei Tapalaga, in his article, 20 Historical Words That We Should Bring Back to Life:

“Life is becoming more and more complex as we evolve in this new era ruled by technology. However, as we evolve, our vocabulary is surprisingly getting simpler, words are becoming shorter and we even use the same word for different meanings. Old English used to be very different, with many complex words that would have exact definitions for certain events, incidents, or descriptive characteristics.”

Well, I would like to start bringing some of these back to life, not with definitions which you can find shared at the end this post, but by actually using them in the text. See if you can pick up the meaning before checking. And thanks to my LinkedIn Colleague, Melinda Ozel, for stimulating this idea.

ON PASSING TIME:

As a self-employed entrepreneur, no one is watching over me to make sure I am not fudgeling. But I find it very easy to drift into distraction, slip in some time to respond to personal emails, comment on Facebook posts, squeeze in the odd game of Spider Solitaire, etc. And while I don’t exactly have ergophobia, sometimes I have such inertia that I just go outside, step into the sun and enjoy the apricity to distract myself for a while before getting down to work.

ON SLEEP:

Sometimes I get a feeling of clinomania and, despite the strong desire to stretch out for a nap, I don’t as I sleep on a Murphy bed which is tidily up against the wall during the day, thuinhibiting the urge.

And then, at night, when I finally can get into bed and fall asleep, I often wake up around 4 am, suffering from uhtceare, worrying about the smallest things that seem totally insignificant when I finally do wake. But what I really love is those mornings when I don’t have any hard and fast time commitments, when my dysonia allows me to continually fall back into my dreams and see where they lead me. But eventually some expergefactor noisily nudges me to crawl out from under the sheets and start my day.

ON OVERINDULGENCE:

Lockdown has led many of us into abligurition – with nowhere else to shop, the food store becomes our point of capitalist obsession. Suffering from famelicose and boredom or isolation, we often end feeling crapulous after endless trips to the fridge and unrestricted consumption of food and drink.

ON CONVERSATION:

I grew up in a family that brabbled a lot.  While not total ultracrepidarians, we all learned to argue our points as if we, in fact, had the truth behind us. We didn’t generally twattle since our topics of discussion were often scientific or philosophical in nature. But we did learn the art of paltering and using jargogle to win an argument.  Which leads conveniently into the topic of politics.

ON POLITICS:

During these many months of Covid, I am incessantly hearing grumbletonians complaining about decisions the government is making regarding how to deal with everything. While I agree that many decisions have not made much sense, I understand that it has been a work in progress and there has been no rule book to follow. But I see many mumpsimuses, who get all their facts from social media, convinced of the truth of their opinions. These supposed mugwumps pretend to be independent thinkers but, in fact, are following a few cuckolorums who dominate the internet channels supporting these views, pushing their personal opinions without ever really entertaining other points of view.

DEFINITIONS:

Abligurition – Spending lavish amounts of money on food

Apricity – Warmth of the sun; basking in the sun

Brabble – To argue loudly about things that don’t matter

Clinomania – An obsessive desire to lie down

CockalorumA small person with a big opinion about himself

Crapulous – To feel ill because you ate too much or drank too much

Dysonia – Someone who has extreme difficulty getting out of bed in the morning is suffering from dystonia, not dystonia which which is a movement disorder in which your muscles contract involuntarily

Ergophobia – The morbid fear of returning to work

Expergefactor – Something that wakes you up

Famelicose – Constantly hungry

Fudgel – The act of giving the impression of working but actually doing nothing

Grumbletonians – People who are angry or very unhappy with the government

Jargogle – To confuse

Mugwump – A person who likes to be politically independent

Mumpsimus – a person who obstinately adheres to unreasonable customs or notions

Palter – To be deliberately unclear/misleading

Twattling – Gossiping idly about unimportant things

Uhtceare – pronounced oot-key-are-a – Laying in bed awake and worrying about tomorrow

Ultracrepidarian – A person who will take literally any chance to share their opinions on things they truly know nothing about

 

RESOURCES:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/january-nelson/2018/08/old-english-words/

https://historyofyesterday.com/20-historical-words-that-we-should-bring-back-to-live-b8d93a2a006e