I fleer at this petty-foggery, mumpsimus!
Sir Anthony van Dyck ca.1638, Lord John Stuart and his brother Lord Bernard. Practitioners of gadzookery?
If you’re ever at a loss for words, it may be because so many of the really good ones have fallen out of use. The headline above could have read “I laugh derisively at this quibbling, you stubborn old pedant,” but what’s the fun in that? Sounds a little pedantic, actually. If you really want to disrespect someone, there’s just no substitute for good old, old English.
You can find a few examples of lost gems at Mental Floss, but there are dozens of other places where old times are not forgotten. If you are feeling a little insult-impaired, this Telegraph article will point you to some handy resources where you can discover which of your acquaintances is a gobslotch and which is a snoker. Though if you call them that to their face, they might be a little misquemed. And there’s a big collection of antique verbiage at The Phrontistery, but many of them are really obscure latinate terms for really obscure things. Fine, if you are of a radicarian bent; if not, feel free to fleer at them.
I’m no expert. Compared to A Way With Words host Grant Barrett, for example, I am engaging in ultracrepidarianism–or the giving of opinions on subjects one knows nothing about. Grant, by the way, is an example of a pilgarlic–peeled garlic–a bald-headed man. Not to be an aretaloger, but I could play out this line of piffle endlessly.
There is an antique term coined specifically for people who enjoy throwing antique terms around. The practice was called gadzookery. Guilty as charged.
Tags: listeningpost
Great post! Once when my husband was a kid, he called his sister an impudent strumpet. She wailed big crocodile tears because she had no idea what that meant and assumed it must be quite awful.
If your point is to communicate, the use of words no longer used makes no sense.
The use of some phrases such as 23 skidoo will date you.
If you want to offend someone, nothing works better than our rich heritage of crude Anglo/Saxon words, none of which would I post here.
One word that was “cool” in the 60’s and 70’s continues to be used for just about everything has become exceeding trite. The word is cool.
Ultracrepidarianism. I work as Academic Editor at a book publisher. This word all too perfectly describes some of the people on the committee to whom we poor editors must present our proposals for new publications. Thanks, Dale. I’ll pass it on to my editor colleagues. And one glorious day I will not be able to resist using the word in the course of one of those meetings! 🙂
I’d be pretty upset if someone called me an impudent strumpet, because I DO know what it means! 🙂 But really, hadn’t we all better eschew obfuscation? Some people, you know, suffer serious sesquipedalophobia. However, I doubt any follower of this blog is an allodoxophobe (my parents taught me never to logitsimy, after all).