Wyn Drabble: Snollygosters, Atpatruus, Ucalegon - English words you can use to flummox the best linguists

OPINION

It is encouraging to see from readers’ recent responses that there are many others who share my love of words.

Thank you to one Hastings reader, for example, who shared some unusual words he enjoys. He said, “Going beyond standard English, there are lots of ‘overspecialised’ words, as they are known in the field of recreational linguistics.” (I had never before thought of my love of language as “recreational linguistics”, but it’s a term I will now embrace.)

Here are three examples from the reader’s offerings:

Atpatruus – one’s great-grandfather’s grandfather’s brother. (If you knew that already, you have early bonus points on the board.)

Ucalegon – a neighbour whose house is on fire.

Taghairm – inspiration sought while lying under a bullock’s hide behind a waterfall.

While I was researching the Scottish derivation of this last one, I happened on another gem. Haplography is “the inadvertent writing once of what should have been written twice”, e.g. misspell misspelled as mispell.

Apparently it is also known as lipography and is not to be confused with haplology, which is where a phoneme is omitted to prevent two similar sounds from occurring consecutively.

Whereas haplography is a textual error, haplology is a phonological process.

Are you already feeling linguistically enriched? Who knows where this could lead!

Wyn Drabble.

My main criterion for favourite words is whether Rowan Atkinson could make me laugh by wrapping his rubber lips around them. Think – in no particular order – hullaballoo, kerfuffle, gobbledygook, whippersnapper, discombobulate, flummox, shenanigans, bamboozle, brouhaha, piffle, blubber, dollop, snollygoster.

Snollygoster is an interesting one, as I found in an online article from Merriam-Webster. They removed it from their Collegiate Dictionary, which is their practice when words fall from favour. Then they found it would reappear every election season, so they had to re-instate it.

It is most applied to politicians (it means “an unprincipled or shrewd person”), which helps explain its seasonal election-time use.

Snollygoster is not to be confused with snallygaster, which is a mythical bird-reptile hybrid associated with rural Maryland. According to Merriam-Webster, “Although the words look similar, there is little evidence to suggest an etymological relationship.” Well, that’s a relief!

When I typed Merriam-Webster a little earlier, I accidentally typed three instances, instead of two, of the letter “R” in Merriam. Of course, I’ve fixed it now, but it made me think, given all these other esoteric offerings, that there must be a word which means “accidentally typing the letter ‘R’ thrice when only twice is required”.

Harrrography perhaps? Submit your suggestions to me c/o this newspaper.

Two other words that I have never used in my life are nudiustertian (meaning very recently or relating to the day before yesterday) and floccinaucinihilipilification (the estimation of something as worthless). I can’t see myself using either of them in the near future.

Williwaw has a more appealing sound, but because it means violent winds that blow in polar latitudes, I can’t see myself using it. Polar tourism is not on my bucket list.

And, for meat-eaters with an eye on the budget, slumgullion is a cheap meat stew.

Mrs D also loves language and therefore enjoys a good word (perhaps I should have said “engages in recreational linguistics”).

I asked her for some favourites, and she offered four: daft, larrikin, sloop, snapdragon. Then she threw down a challenge: “Use those four words in a short story containing exactly 40 words.” Within minutes I had completed an oeuvre which I shall use as my conclusion.

I knew from the outset that it was a daft idea. Who in his right mind would venture out to sea in a sloop called Snapdragon with a larrikin at the helm? Especially when the larrikin’s name was Davy Jones.

Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.