Great Insults

Webster has a list of some great and rarely used insults.


01. Cockalorum
- a boastful and self-important person; a strutting little fellow


02. Lickspittle
- a fawning subordinate; a suck-up


03. Smellfungus
- an excessively faultfinding person


04. Snollygoster (different from Snollygaster, btw)
- an unprincipled but shrewd person


05. Ninnyhammer
- ninny; simpleton, fool


06. Mumpsimus
- a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong


07. Milksop
- an unmanly man; a mollycoddle (a pampered or effeminate boy or man)


08. Hobbledehoy
- an awkward, gawky young man


09. Pettifogger
- shyster; a lawyer whose methods are underhanded or disreputable


10. Mooncalf
- a foolish or absentminded person

Worthless Word of the Day

I'm a word junkie (yes, there's a word for that heheh) so one of my daily sites is the Worthless Word of the Day.


I highly recommend it for such morsels as:

suffisance
cumulose
obscurantist
subreption

and the hilarious:
helliferocious & ambisinister

p.s. no, it's not wordphile, it's logomaniac.

Unknown Words While Reading

I've had this problem for a long time now, ever since I've started reading actually. How to handle words in the text that I don't know. I've tried different things:

Looking them up immediately
Making a list for each chapter and looking them up afterwards
Ignoring them and just flag the page to go back to later

The trouble is I don't like looking up words while I'm reading because it's a hassle and I'm lazy like that. I can get myself to make a list while I read but then I'm looking up the words out of context. Ignoring them and thinking I'm going to get back to them later never works. So what to do?

Overall, probably the best solution is to look them up as I read but that's not always convenient because sometimes I'm reading outside, or in bed or sitting in some room someplace or riding in a car...it's just not convenient to lug around a dictionary. I guess an iPhone would be good for this, then I could access ninjawords or something (btw, ninjawords isn't as comprehensive as dictionary.com or others so far. Unfortunately, dictionary.com has a 100% success rate for me while the other online dictionaries I've tried at best get 99% from me...gah).

I have a HUGE dictionary here on my desk. HUGE. I've had it for a while now and while it's not completely up to date with the latest words like I dunno, blog, woot and ZOMG! it's overall fairly comprehensive. I've been making tick marks next to words I've looked up over the years so when I end up looking them up again I know I should be familiar with it. That's why I dig ninjawords history list so much. In a more perfect world dictionary.com would have a history list.

So I'm open for ideas. I'm thinking the best solution (until I get an iPhone or something) is to look up words right then and there or if I can't for some reason, jot down the word on the bookmark I'm using in the book and look them up later. What words don't I know you say? Here's a small selection from my current list:

Splenetic
Encyclicals
Monitories
Scabious
Missal
Lees
Santonin
Nasturtium
Antiphony
Dalmatic
Faille
Samovar

Online Dictionaries

I love the meaning of words. To me not only does finding just the right word for something help you sub-vocalize about things in a more precise manner but it allows you to really communicate your ideas clearly but I'm really getting tired of dictionary.com.

It's slow.
They want you to pay for some content.
They have big banner ads.

Now there are a lot of online dictionaries out there:
Dictionary.com
Thefreedictionary.com
Etymonline.com
Merriam-Webster
Google (yes, really. Just type in "define:word" where word is the word you're looking for.)
dict.org (Thanks Mat!)

And one you should bookmark:
Urbandictionary.com

I've decided to use two online dictionaries from now on. My second deeper investigation of a word will check dictionary.com, but from now on my initial search for a word will be at Ninjawords.com.

Ninjawords is clean, fast and efficient. It's like google for words in many ways. And they have one feature that just blows dictionary.com out of the ocean.

A PERSONAL SEARCH HISTORY. Finally.

Bookmark it.
Love it.
Use it.