Thousands of terms in the great word hoard of English inevitably fall by the wayside, becoming forgotten or mere curiosities. Some people reflexively call any words not familiar to them "big words."
And others of us bristle at hearing what sounds like jargon. We often consider such English as language intended to impress or bewilder.
But unfamiliar words are just that, and those with more general meanings can be fascinating and certainly worth our attention. (The use of big words or love of a pretentiously arcane vocabulary is "lexiphanicism," by the way.)
We tend to think of big words as long, Latinate terms, such as "incommensurability" (the lacking of a basis for comparison), "supralapsarianism" (the theological doctrine that the decree of election preceded human creation and the Fall)," not to mention "megasyllabic" words like "floccinaucinihilipilification" (the estimating of a thing as worthless)--the latter celebrated as one of the longest words in the language.
But not all big words are a foot and a half long -- or (to use a big word for that) sesquipedalian. Thousands are relatively short -- if not downright stubby -- and include even one-syllable words.
Below we offer a 60-word list of big words, none of which contains more than three syllables (we've also excluded terms having very technical meanings).
The great majority of these words won't be found in your trusty collegiate dictionary, much less your spell-check (many do, however, show up in the Collins Scrabble Dictionary). They've been drawn primarily from older and larger lexicons published by Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and Funk and Wagnalls.
The terms below -- most of them rarely seen or heard today -- have meanings that are contemporarily relevant. Why not spread the word -- adopt a few and help get them back into circulation.
1. natiform: buttocks-like
2. anderun: harem
3. terete: torpedo-shaped
4. cortinate: cobweb-like
5. sinistral: on or to the left
6. squage: to dirty with handling
7. plat: building plot or lot
8. treen: made of wood; wooden
9. oculus: opening at the top of a dome
10. tucket: trumpet flourish or signal
11. riprap: broken stone
12. tootlish: muttering in a childish way
13. pingo: mound in permafrost terrain
14. vitative: loving life
15. ledgit: note or other slip of paper projecting from a book's pages
16. symphoric: accident-prone
17. maremma: swampy coastline
18. gleet: sticky, greasy, or slimy filth
19. quisquose: hard to deal with; ticklish
20. eoan: pertaining to dawn or the east
21. cruentous: bloody
22. muscid: pertaining to the housefly
23. crinkum: venereal disease
24. pandurate: fiddle- or violin-shaped
25. arles: money to bind a bargain; money up front
26. meline: pertaining to a badger or badgers
27. begrutten: having a face swollen from weeping
28. lentic: dwelling in still or slow-moving waters
29. xeres: sherry
30. ruderous: filled with garbage
31. storge: instinctive parental affection
32. vadelect: servant
33. indult: special privilege or license
34. forfex: scissors
35. palafitte: stilt house
36. col: saddle or pass between mountains
37. empasm: fragrant powder
38. clou: center of attention; cynosure
39. trantles: things of little value
40. Ogygian: very old
41. benthic: pertaining to the ocean depths or bottom
42. bight: bay at a coastal bend
43. ashlar: hewn or squared masonry stone
44. darg: a day's work
45. roupy: low and throaty (voice)
46. allatrate: to bark like a dog
47. gyre: giant circular rotating system of ocean currents
48. caprylic: smelling like an animal
49. ocreate: wearing leggings or boots
50. preterist: one who lives in the past
51. staffage: details added to a painting
52. feak: dangling curl of hair
53. quoz: strange or absurd thing or person
54. lectual: confining to a bed (as a disease)
55. faex: sediment or dregs
56. secundate: to make prosperous
57. mimp: to purse one's lips
58. gravedo: head cold
59. thob: to rationalize one's opinions or beliefs
60. sphalm: an erroneous or mistaken belief or doctrine
David Grambs and Ellen S. Levine are the authors of The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (Expanded Second Edition).
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