And Then There Was the Word: A column about our language:

Language keeps changing. Even when spelling got pretty much solidified in the 18th and 19th century, pronunciation and vocabulary continued to evolve. That means that scads of words that once were are no longer. New words (neologisms) come into the language and old ones go out.For this column I would like to look at some old dead words you haven't seen in a long time-or you've never seen before.

You can find many of these words in Jeffrey Kacirk's wonderful book Forgotten English (New York: Morrow, 1997) or in Erin McKean's More Weird and Wonderful Words (New York: Oxford, 2003).

When two opposing groups of soldiers met, they had a scaramouch. The word started out in fencing, and it winds up in Modern English as "skirmish." It also appears in modern football as "scrimmage," the line at which the football lies at the beginning of a play.

In "scaramouch" you can see the evolution of the sounds into our two modern words. But there is no such evolution with the word "pilgarlick," which has nothing to do with pills. The word means baldness-or, more properly, a chrome dome. A bald head looks like a peeled clove of garlic. The word was also used to designate the bald person, as in, "The sun shines off that pilgarlick's pate."

If you know your Greek and Latin, you can often figure out what a word means by translating its roots. "Mesonoxian" comes from two Latin roots: "meso-" means "middle," as in Meso-America. And "nox" is the Latin word for "night." "Mesonoxian" means having to do with midnight. You can impress your friends by saying that you have a mesonoxian tryst-you are meeting someone at midnight. The word "tryst" implies that lovers are involved. So a mesonoxian tryst sounds good to me.

If you do have such a tryst, you better not be caught in any glaikery-foolish conduct. And before such a date, you should attend to your infucation, which means the careful putting on of make-up. You wouldn't want to go out and look unconcinnous (inelegant or messy), would you? And if you are properly infucted (made up), you may get a semihiant kiss (one with the lips half open). This could be good . . .

Many of these words were probably made up by some snob to make others think he was smart. Use of such words may make people think, "Wow! He knows a lot." But they also may think, "What a jerk, using words that no one understands. Show off! Fool!" So you must choose your venues carefully when you use these locutions. Always judge your audience and use words they have half a chance of knowing.

Also, it's best to use these fancy old words orally. Trying to spell them can lead to disaster, partly because they are so rare that their spelling does not trip off our lips, and partly because many people are heterographic, and will get them wrong. "Heterographic?" you may ask. Sure. It means not good at spelling. Bad spelling is also called "inorthography." Better to tell people that you are inorthographic than to say, "I am a bad speller." The latter shows your weakness; the former shows your brilliance. You certainly don't want to come off as a hoddypeak (a fool).

People might challenge your use of one of these words. You can snap back, "Don't obacerate me." This means "contradict."

Sometimes a word crops up that you have never heard or seen before, but you can sort of make it out by analyzing its parts. Someone might say, "That was a selcouth experience." The first part of the word also appears in "seldom." The "couth" part of that word goes back to the Old English "kennen," to know. If someone knew how to act in good company, she was "couth," "knowing." That word has dropped out of the language, but the negative of that, "uncouth," has survived. So "selcouth" means, etymologically, "seldom known," or, in Modern English, "unusual," "marvelous," or "strange."

Now, you want to see a really weird word? "Spanghew." I'm not sure anyone knows where this one comes from, but it means to throw something into the air from the end of a stick, like a frog. I can assure you, I don't use this word daily. In fact, I have never done such a thing to a frog. But there it is, in the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, and who am I to question it?

Here's a good one for you to use when you need to apologize. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry for my ignotism." This means a mistake you made out of ignorance. Note that the offense was not from malice or intention. It was because you didn't have all the facts. "Please excuse my ignotism" will get them to change the subject fast and divert their attention from whatever it was you were apologizing for.

Having a big vocabulary can come in handy sometimes. Try some of these out. You might come across as being quite illecebrous (attractive, alluring).



By the way, in my last column I asked you to see if you could make words out of the consonant clusters that I presented. Here are the answers: KCZ (zwieback-a biscuit); PHJ (jodhpurs-riding pants); UVW (liverwurst); KLV (talkative); VQK (quicksilver-mercury); KKJ (jackknife); KQW (squawk); UUU (unusual). How many did you get?