Unusual English words

The following are words that are not very common in English, especially in normal usage. Some are rather specialized, a few are not used anymore, but most of all, these are words with unusual and interesting meanings, and make for good trivia knowledge.

Word	Meaning
Acnestis	The unreachable spot between the shoulders
Aglet	The plastic or metallic coating at the end of shoelaces
Agraffe	The wire that holds the cork in a champagne bottle
Aphthongs	Silent letters in words (like the ‘’k’’ in “knight”)
Apricity	The warmth of the sun on a cold day (an obsolete word)
Arachibutyrophobia	An excessive, irrational fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
Armscye	The armhole in clothes, to which sleeves are sewn
Barm	The foam on the top of beer
Berm	A level strip of ground or dirt, e.g., along the base of a wall, hill or slope, or between a hole and the mound of dirt from the hole
Biblioklept	A person who steals books
Box tent, tent, or pizza saver	The small plastic table-like piece that placed in the center of a pizza box
Brannock Device	The metallic device used for measure foot sizes in shoe stores
Caruncule	The triangular bump inside the corner of the eye
Chanking	Food that has been spat out
Collywobbles	The feeling of butterflies in the stomach (an old British term)
Columella (or columella nasi)	The area of the nose between the nostrils
Contronym	The word that has two opposite meanings (e.g., “sanction” can mean to approve, or to impose punishments; “to seed” can mean to plant seeds, or to remove them from fruit or vegetables)
Cornicione	The outer part of the pizza crust
Crapulence	The sick feeling that one gets after eating or drinking too much
Defenestration	Jumping out of a window, or throwing someone or something out of a window
Desire path	A shortcut path created by pedestrians walking through an area, e.g., through grassy areas, because it is shorter than the regular footpath
Dysania	The state or condition when you find it too difficult to get out of the bed in the morning
Ereyesterday	The day before yesterday (an obsolete term)
Ferrule	The metal band that connects the eraser to a wooden pencil
Filled pause	A filler syllable used when speakers need time to think of what to say next (e.g., ‘’uh, um, er’’)
Glabella	The space between the eyebrows
Googleganger	A person with the same name as you who shows up when you Google your own name
Grawlix	A string of non-letter characters (like !@#$%^*&, or “holy %$&!”) that are used in place of profanity (e.g., in comics)
Griffonage	Unreadable, illegible hand-writing
Gynecomastia	Man-boobs
Interrobang	A combination of an exclamation mark and a question mark (‽, or ?!) for an emphatic question
Karoshi	Death due to being overworked (from Japanese)
Keeper	The loop of a belt that holds the end in place after passing through the buckle
Kummerspeck	Excess weight due to emotional overeating (from German, meaning “grief bacon”)
Lawn mullet	A neatly mowed front lawn, with an unmowed messay back lawn (say, at a North American house)
Lemniscate	The infinity symbol (∞) or similar figure-eight shapes
Lunule	The white, crescent-shaped part of a fingernail or toenail
Minimus	Your small pinky finger or toe
Mondegreen	Misheard song lyrics
Mononymous	A person known by only one name (rather than a first and last name), such as Adele, Madonna, Voltaire, or Nero (though they have full names that are not commonly known); in some cultures, mononomy is actually the norm (e.g., Sudharto, former president of Indonesia)
Morton’s toe	When the second toe is bigger than the big toe.
Muntin	The strip separating window panes.
Murder	A group of crows
Natiform	Resembling the buttocks, buttocks-shaped (adjective)
Nibling	The non-gender-specific term for a niece or nephew — like sibling
Niddick	The nape or back of the neck
Nurdle	A small dab, e.g., of toothpaste
Obelus	The division sign (÷)
Octothorpe	The pound (#) button on a telephone
Oldfangled	Old-fashioned
Overmorrow	The day after tomorrow (a somewhat old term that has fallen out of use, but needs to be brought back into regular English usage)
Palindromes	A word or phrase that reads the same way forwards and backwards (e.g., mom, racecar, taco cat)
Paper-belly	A person who is unable to drink liquor straight (or pure, in British), or who grimaces after drinking
Paresthesia	The feeling of one’s hand or foot being aslep
Paresthesia	The feeling of pins and needles, or crawling skin
Peen	A semi-spherical side, e.g., of a ball-peen hammer
Peladophobia	An excessive, irrational fear of bald people, or of becoming bald
Pentheraphobia	An excessive, irrational fear of one’s mother-in-law
Petrichor	The smell of the air after it rains
Philtrum	The groove between the nose and the middle of the upper lip
Phloem bundles	The long strings of a banana peel that are seen when peeling a banana
Phosphenes	The sheen or light that you see when you close your eyes and rub them or press them with the hands
Pips	The small dots on dominoes, dice, or ping pong paddles
Punt	The indentation at the bottom of a glass bottle (partly to reduce the liquid content, but more so to make the bottom stronger)
Purlicue	The empty space between an outstretched thumb and the forefinger
Quincunx	The five dot pattern on dice
Rasceta	The lines on the inside of the wrist
Rectal Tenesmus	The feeling of incomplete defecation
Rhinotillexomania	Compulsive nose-picking
Scandiknavery	Deceit by Scandinavians (which is odd, as they have a reputation for being very honest)
Schadenfreude	The joy felt when a person you dislike experiences hardship or tragedy (from German, meaning “harm joy”)
Scroop	The swooshy sound made by long gowns, or the movement of silk
Scurryfunge	When one goes around frantically cleaning before a visitor arrives
Semantic satiation	The feeling you get when you keep repeating a word so that it seems to lose its meaning
Semordnilap	A word or phrase that means one thing forward but something else backwards (e.g., stressed – desserts; diaper – repaid; parts – strap; semordnilap – palindrome)
Snellen chart	An eye exam chart
Snood	The fleshy appendage around a turkey’s neck
Souffle cup	A small cup for ketchup or other condiments
Steatopygic	Having a large bottom (adjective)
Tines	The prongs of a fork
Tittle	The dot over the letter “i” or the letter “j”
Trypophobia	An irrational fear, aversion, anxiety, or feeling of disgust, from objects with patterns of holes or bumps (e.g., honeycombs, wasp nests, certain foods like strawberries or pomegranates, certain flowers like lotus seed heads, coral, bubbles, sponges, clusters of eyes)
Ulage	The empty space between the top of a bottle and the liquid inside it
Vagitus	The cry of a new born baby
Vibrassae	A formal term for a cat’s whiskers (vibrissa = a singular whisker)
Vocables	Filler syllables like ‘na na na’ and ‘la la la’ in song lyrics, which really have no meaning
Vorfreude	The joy felt when thinking about good things that will happen (from German, meaning “fore joy”)
Wamble	The rumbling of one’s stomach
Zarf	A cup holder (for use inside a car), or a cardboard sleeve for a coffee cup
Zugzwang	The painful feeling you get when playing a game, and any move you make with your game piece would hurt (e.g., in chess) (from Germn, meaning “forced move”)