What’s your favorite word that you would never use in ordinary conversation?
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Scrofulous.
Rebarbative.
Fucking.
Motherfucker.
Hey, you asked!
what, you wouldn’t say that it in conversation? Why not?
Perihelion. Almost never comes up in conversation.
I’ll see your perihelion and raise you a Syzygy. Good luck figuring out how it’s pronounced without looking it up.
Syzygy was going to be my word. I don’t use it in conversation because I’m never confident on how to pronounce it. But what makes it so cool is the way it looks on the page, not the way it sounds.
AND how it can get (and win!) and immediate Scrabble challenge.
After which, no one will dare to challenge your words, no matter how nonsensical.
Depauperate.
Fissiparous. Yet it is hard to discuss the progressive movement without its use.
Slumgullion
Coruscate
It even confused an English major once, who was a graduate student in Occitan at the time. Since it’s based on a Latin verb, the incident did cause a little embarrassment when we confirmed the word in the dictionary upon the statement “You made that up.” The “Star Wars” movies hadn’t yet been released either.
I hate that sucker. It’s obvious to me that it should have a totally different meaning and be spelled with a double r, and I can’t seem to learn it. Just had to look it up again to make sure you were spelling it right.
If you had a proper grounding in the CLASSICS, you would immediately know the phrase “Coruscating beams of ravening energies”
The classics in question having been written by E.E. “Doc” Smith, of course.
i can’t think of any. if the word fits, i use it.
scurrilous
Shmuck
Cartograph.
Ah, hell, I’d probably use that, too.
puerile
I have a favorite word phrase that I use to define the Republican Party: the epitome of assininity
a favorite; obsequious.
“Sesquipedalian”. I like it’s recursivity: if you know what it means, you are one.
“its”, rather.
Felch
If you don’t know, don’t ask.
Schadenfreude.
Galumphing.
The other day at the office I said sarcastically about something our adversary (we’re lawyers) had done, “that just warms the cockles of my heart,” and the young woman I was talking to clearly wasn’t sure if she should be offended or not.
I think I will leave the cockles at home from now on.