Cacestogenous: caused by unfavourable home environment (OU)
Calepin: a notebook; a dictionary, esp a polyglot dictionary [It. calepino, named after Ambrogio Calepino ((15th-16th cent. author of a Latin dictionary]
Callisteia: beauty prizes; originally a festival held by the women of the island of Lesbos, with a prize for the fairest beauty [name of the festival , named in honour of the Greek goddess of Callisto]
Callithumpian: a noisy band parade or demonstration [alteration of gallithumpian)
Cambist: one skilled in the science of financial exchange; a banker [from L. cambire (“to exchange”)]
Campestral: pertaining to or thriving in open countryside [L. fromcampester from campus (“field”; “plain”) + -al]
Canard: a fabricated anecdote; an unfounded sensational report; a phoney yarn; a hoax — or to put it in immediately-recognisable contemporary currency…fake news [Fr. canard (“duck”), in the sense of being a hoax] 🦆
Cancrine: reads the same backwards as forwards; palindromic [From Latincancer (“crab”) + -īnus]
Canatory: pertaining to a singer or singing [from It. cantata from L. cantare (“to sing”) + -ory] (cf. Cantatrice: female singer) 🎤
Caprine: pertaining to a goat; goat-like [L. caprīnus, from caper (“goat”)] 🐐
Carriwitchet: absurd, riddling question; a condundrum; a kind of hoax; pun [uncertain, possibly a humorous alteration of catechism]
Castrophenia: the belief that one’s thoughts are being stolen by one’s enemies (OU, castro- kastron-(?))
Catholicon: a universal remedy or fix; panacea [Gk. katholikós, (“universal”), from katá, “(according to”) + –hólos, “(whole”)]
Charientism: a figure of speech wherein an insult is disguised as or softened by a jest [from Gk. kharientismós]
Chimera: (also spelt Chimaera) imaginary monster; fanciful; impossible idea; a body; an unjustified fear [from Greek mythology: a fire-breathing she-monster having a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail]
Circumforaneous: wandering from house to house, from place to place, from market to market [L. circumforāneus (“itinerant”), from circum- (“around”) + –forum (“marketplace”) + -aneus (“-aneous”)]
Claudicant: (Medic.) limping (L. claudicans from claudio (“to limp”) from claudus (“crippled”)]
Claviger: club-bearer; key-keeper or caretaker [L. from clavi- (“clavi”) – + -ger (“bearing, bearer”)] 🔑
Comiconomenclaturist: a connoisseur of humorous names; a specialist in the creation of funny names [from L. comicus (“of comedy”) from Gk. komikos (“of or pertaining to comedy”) + L. nōmenclātūra nomenclature (“naming”) + -ist]
Badaud: a person given to idle observation of everything, with wonder or astonishment; a credulous or gossipy idler; an urban bystander who “rubbernecks” (gawks) at some incident [Fr. fromOld Occitanbadau, frombadar, fromMedieval Latinbadare(“to gape”; “yawn”)]
Baffona: a woman with a slight moustache [It. from baffo (“moustache”)]
Balmaiden: a female surface miner [Cornish: bal (“mine”) + -maiden (“a young or unmarried woman”)]
Balistarius: a crossbowman [Gk. ballístra frombállō,(“I throw”) + -ius]
Balletomane: a person fanatically devoted to ballet; balletmaniac [fromFr. balletomane]
Balneal: pertaining to bathing or baths [L. balneum (“bath”) +-al, -ary] (cf. Balneotherapy: treatment using natural water)
Banausic: common, ordinary, mundane, undistinguished, dull, insipid [Gk. banausikós,(“of or for mechanics”), frombánausos,(“mechanical; ironsmith”)]
Bandobast: protection of a person, building or organisation from crime or attack [Pers. band-o-bast(“tying and binding”), from Urdu. bundobast]
Baryecoia: dullness of hearing; deafness (OU)
Basial: pertaining to kissing (OU) 💋
Battue: the driving of game towards hunters by beaters; massacre of helpless people [Fr. battue, (“beaten”), fromL. battere]
Biverbal: relating to two words; punning [L. bi (“two”) + fromLateL. -verbālis(“belonging to a word”)]
Brachiation: the act of swinging from tree limb to tree limb (as performed by primates) [L. bracchium, (“arm“) + -tion] 🐵
Acapnotic: someone who doesn’t smoke; a non-smoker [Gk. a (“not”) + –capno, –kapnós (“smoke”)] 🚭
Acataleptic: incomprehensible; one who suspends judgment as a matter of principle believing certainty is impossible [Gk. akatálēptos, (“incomprehensible”), from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + –katalambánō, (“I seize”)]
Afreet: (also spelt Ifrit) (Arabian mythology) an evil spirit or giant monster; a powerful type of demon in Islamic culture [possibly from Arab. afara, (“to rub with dust” or “to roll into dust”)]
Agonist: one that is engaged in a struggle (as in “antagonist”) [Gk. agōnistḗs, (“combatant”; “champion”)]
Airmonger: someone who is attracted to visionary ideas and projects; quixotic, a hopeless visionary [air + L. –mangō (“dealer”; “trader”)]
Aischrolatreia: worship of filth, dirt, smut; cult of obscenity [Gk. aischros (“shameful”; “ugly”), from aischos (“disgrace”) + -latreia (“latry”)]
Allagrugous: grim and ghastly; sour; woebegone [Scot. Gaelic. origin uncertain]
Allision: intentional collision, especially of ships [Late L. allision-, allisio, from Latin allisus (allidere (“to strike against”) from ad- + -lidere, from laedere (“to hurt”) + -ion] 🚢 🛳️
Allochthonous: Originating in a place other than where it is found (esp in geology); foreign [Gk. állos (“other”) + –khthṓn (“earth”; “ground”)] (cf. Autochthonous: native to the place where it is found; indigenous)
Ambisinister: unskilled or clumsy with both hands [L. ambi (“both”; “around”) + sinister (“on the left side; unfavourably located)] 🙌
Amphigean: found or occuring throughout the world; across all geographic zones [Gk. amphí, (“on both sides”) + –geō (“earth”)] 🌍
Anabiosis: return to life after seeming death; a state of suspended animation [Gk. aná (“again”) + -biōsis, from –bioun (“to live”), from -bios (“life”)]
Antibasilican: opposed to the principle of monarchy [anti (“-against”) + –basilike (“royal”; “kingly”)] 👑
Apanthropy: dislike of being in the company of other people; love of solitude [Gk. apó (“from”; “away from”) + –ánthrōpos, (“human”)]
Apaetesis: a matter put aside in anger to be taken-up later (OU)
Autoangelist: one who does his own communicating [self + -angelist(?)]
Autothaumaturgist: someone who pretends to be notable or feigns an air of mystery about him or herself [Gk. auto (“self”) + –thaumaturgist (“performer of miracles; a magician”)]
Key: OU = origin unknown
Note: some of the sources I have drawn on in the Redux A–Z, in addition to those previously acknowledged in the original Logolept’s Diet, include Peter Bowler, The Superior Person’s Great Big Book of Words (1996) and ‘Luciferous Logolepsy’ (arcane.org/)
Z is the twenty-sixth and not-always-lucky last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet and other western European languages. It is most commonly pronounced zed, as used in international English. But in the US, and sometimes in Canadian and Caribbean English, the preference is for zee. A third, archaic variant pronounces the letter “Z” as izzard, whose usage today is confined to Hong Kong English and Cantonese. “Z” derives from the Greek letter zeta, reaching English via the customary pathway of Latin. The ancient Greek “Z” was a close copy of the Phoenician_alphabet”>Phoenician Zayin (I) (meaning “weapon” or “sword”). Around 300 BC, Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus relegated the letter Z to the ancient history archives, striking it from the alphabet allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, owing to it “looking like the tongue of a corpse”🅐.
Zabernism: misuse or abuse of military authority; bullying [From the German name for Saverne, a town in Alsace involving a 1913 incident of an overzealous soldier who wounded a cobbler for laughing at him, ultimately triggering an intervention from the army who took over the power from local authorities]
Zaftig: having a full, rounded figure; pleasingly plump (esp of a woman) [Yiddish. zaftik, (“juicy” or “succulent”) from zaft, (“juice” or “sap”)]
Zatch: female genitalia [? uncertain, slang term possibly based on the colloquial word “snatch” for the female organ — cf. “rosebud”; “yoni”, etc, etc]
Zebrinny: what you get when you cross a stallion (male horse) with a female zebra [blend of “zebra”, from Old Galician Port. enzebro, ezebra, azebra (“wild ass”) + “hinny”, from L. hinnus – possibly cognate with hinnire (“to whinny”)] (cf. Zorse: offspring of an equine mare’s congress with a male zebra)
Zeitgeist: (perhaps doesn’t quality for this list on the criterion of obscurity as it has become quite a trendy word in academe and among the “twitterati”, but its popular and topical usage has overstretched and distorted (or downsized) its meaning **see “The Incredible Shrinking Zeitgeist: How Did This Great Word Lose Its Meaning?”, Katy Waldman, Slate, 06-Jul-2015, www.slate.com)**…so here goes anyway!) a broad definition of the term concerns what’s going on artistically, culturally, religiously or intellectually within a given epoch; perhaps “the defining spirit or mood of a particular age” captures its essence more completely [Ger. zeit (“time”) + –geist (“spirit” or “ghost”)]
Zephyr: a soft, gentle breeze; a light or west wind 🌬️ [from Zephyrus, the Greek god or personification of the west wind]
Zoanthropy: (Psychiatry) the delusion that one is an animal [Gk. zo-, zôion (“animal”) + –anthropy (“human”; “man”) (cf. Lycanthropy)
Zob: a worthless or good-for-nothing person; a fool [origin uncertain but one contention is it derives from Fr. zob (“dick”; “cock”), itself deriving from Arabic (zubb)]
Zoonosis: any disease passed from animals to humans [Zo- + -nosos (“disease”)]
Zooscopy: (also Zoopsia) the scientific observation of animals ; (Psychiatry) hallucination that one is seeing animals [Gk. zoo + –skopéō, (“to see”)]
Zwischenzug: chess move made to play for time (cf. Zugzwang: chess blockade) [Ger. from zwischen (“between”) +-zug (“move”)]
Zygodactyl: (of a bird) having two toes pointing forward and two pointing backwards [Gk. zygo (“yoke”; “yoke-shaped”) + –dáktylos (“finger”)] (cf. Zygal: formed like the letter H; of, like or pertaining to a yoke or union)
Zymologist: a scientist who studies chemical fermentation [Gk. zym from zúmē (“ferment”) + -o + -logist]
🅐 a more likely explanation is that the “z” sound had disappeared from Latin at that time making the letter useless for spelling Latin words…a few centuries later it got a recall to the A(to Z) team
ᘛᘚ°༻༺。༄༄༄༅༅༅ᘛᘚ༻༺。༄༄༄༅༅༅༻༻°ᘛᘚ༅༅༻༺°ᘛᘚ
Z done, thus marks the culmination and conclusion of our alphabetical voyage through lexical-land. While merely scratching the surface of what’s out there lexically of an unusual bent, we have encountered a good cross-section of the more obscure, obsolete, curious and odd and sometimes simply weird words and their origins that inhabit the English language. It’s appropriate that at this juncture I should acknowledge my debt to the sources for my little project which have, collectively, provided the drawing board and raw materials for the realisation of this alphabetical compendium.
Of particular aid to my lexiconic quest were:
▫️Phrontistery https://phrontistery.info/ my usual “go-to” reference-point for the majority of entries, an exhaustive repository for sheer volume of unusual, rare and redundant words alone, although the dictionary does not provide word derivations. Definitions are brief
▫️Grandiloquent Dictionary www.islandnet.com/ along similar lines to the Phrontistery but providing a smaller range of words
▫️List of Greek and Latin roots in English (Wikipedia) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/ a good point of departure for the root prefix and suffix base classical meanings