what words aren't used enough these days

Capt'n Midnight

0utshined wrote:

There's a lot of words that don't get anywhere near enough use. Some that come to mind are :

1) Discombobulated

Usage: The presenter was discombobulated by the jeering crowd.

Ugggh I'm sick of hearing Gerry Ryan spouting stuff like that. Debases all those words.


Flutterby a word that has fallen out of use.

Franky Boy

People keep using the word cynical too much these days even when they have no idea of what it means and it's pissing me off!!!!
People should use the word Ostentatious!

Sapien

Shabadu wrote:

If we're being pedantic, the correct spellings are "humorously pedantic".

I think you'll find that when people use the word pedantic, they most often mean to say semantic.

I keep a pocket Molsekine notebook with me at all times, and the back page always bears the heading "Excellent Words", for me jot jot down any that occur to me. At present the list is as follows:

Marplot,
Vanward,
Heterodox,
Kairos,
Quincunx,
Apercu,
Dithyramb,
Eupheuism.

lacuna

I don't think "rather" is used enough these days.
After reading a lot of books written in the first half of the 19th century I've come to find that some of the ways people said things was far more eloquent than the way people say things today. It's as if we just don't take the time to use more interesting and descriptive words.

meditraitor

Please

tim3115

Lacuna, what books would you recommend from that period? Always fancied reading something from that time..

Fabulo

lacuna wrote:

I don't think "rather" is used enough these days.
After reading a lot of books written in the first half of the 19th century I've come to find that some of the ways people said things was far more eloquent than the way people say things today. It's as if we just don't take the time to use more interesting and descriptive words.

Or, rather, we've grown rather unaccustomed to all those niceties that were rather a mixed blessing anyway... Heh. Damn Victorianism (how's that for eloquence? ).

I think people should invent more words... My favourite invented word is "to jentaculate: to eat breakfast" from ientaculum, meaning breakfast. So much more musical than "to breakfast", heh.

GrumPy

nigreeletbops.

0utshined

lacuna wrote:

I don't think "rather" is used enough these days.
After reading a lot of books written in the first half of the 19th century I've come to find that some of the ways people said things was far more eloquent than the way people say things today. It's as if we just don't take the time to use more interesting and descriptive words.

I like that one.

Another one word I rather like is Fustilugs.

lacuna

tim3115 wrote:

Lacuna, what books would you recommend from that period? Always fancied reading something from that time..

There are so many genres within that period so it's hard to isolate a couple of books that characterise it.
In my post when referring to eloquent language I think I was talking about books by F. Scott Fitzgerald, ("The Great Gatsby" was afaik his most famous novel), also I'm rather a big fan of Hemingway, especially "Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises", Aldous Huxley too (though I'm usually more interested in his ideas than necessarily the way he puts them across).

You should take a look at Camus, Woolf, Sartre and Beckett perhaps. I've found them all very interesting and thought provoking.