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The unusual words in this episode of The List Show will make a strong case to enter your vocabulary immediately. You'll learn a great archaic word used to describe a coward and some foreign terms that can't quite be translated into English. Erin shares the meaning of everything from abecedary to uxorious. In case you forgot, The List Show is a trivia-tastic, fact-filled show for curious people. Subscribe here for new Mental Floss episodes every Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpZ5qUqpW4hW4zdfuBxMSJA?sub_confirmation=1 Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 50 Words You'll Want to Start Using | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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0:00
Gallagaskins are loose breeches. A quake buttock, as Mrs. Burns' Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure
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and Preposterous Words tells us, is a coward. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, this is The List Show
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and quake buttock is the single greatest insult I've ever heard. Today I'm sharing 50 words
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you'll want to start incorporating into your conversations. Some are borrowed from other
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languages. Some have fallen out of use. Others are just obscure or made me laugh
0:23
I'm not talking a bunch of Baraguan. And it's not mere lalation, either. And yes
0:27
I will explain the meaning of both of those odd nouns later in the video
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Let's get started. Bum fodder is sort of exactly what it sounds like
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Fodder, or something you feed, to your bum. It was originally applied to toilet paper, but took on a more creative usage to describe
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literature that was deemed worthless. Clinch poop is, happily, not related to bums
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a term of contempt for one considered wanting
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in gentlemanly breeding. The 16th century publication The Institution of a Gentleman described a clinch poop as
1:04
a man who knoweth no fashions. We're generally against cultural snobbery at mental floss, but next time someone insults
1:11
your outfit or your favorite author, you have my permission to call them a clinch poop
1:15
Another term we should be thankful is not related to the bathroom is Worcester poop
1:18
Though the Urban Dictionary defines it as the act of defecating out of a helicopter
1:24
I literally looked that up. Finally, a way to describe that near-daily occurrence. It's
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more commonly known as British slang, for a slight smack upside the head. Or, more figuratively
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the kind of realization that might make you give yourself a Worcester poop. Sir Walter
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Scott used it in his series Tales of My Landlord. Incredible title. Need to read that someday
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And more recently, it was used as the title of a book by R.J. Corrigan
1:46
A word that does belong in the bathroom is guardrobe. In the late 17th century, it came
1:50
to be used as a synonym for a privy or toilet. A writer in that era described that as the
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place for the private deeds of nature—a euphemism that somehow sounds more obscene
1:59
than just saying what those deeds are outright. If you've ever gotten into a fight with a romantic partner about what to order for dinner
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that night, someone was probably engaging in shilly-shallying. The Oxford English Dictionary
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says that to shilly is to vacillate be irresolute or undecided In the category of things that are onomatopoeias only in my own mind we have loof or the inside of a cat paw according to Mrs Burns
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dictionary. I can't explain why loof sounds exactly like what it is, and I don't think
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I should have to. On the flip side, glabriety sounds to my ear like it should be referring
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to mirthful conversation. It actually refers to baldness. If you're afraid of glabriety
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you suffer from paladophobia. That can include the fear of going bald or the fear of bald
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people. Given some of the unsavory words that have the necro prefix—your filiacs, your mansers
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your tithing fasciitis—you might assume that you wouldn't want someone to call you a necrologist
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If you write obituaries, though, that's exactly what you are. I am an indirect necrologist
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in fact. If you haven't seen the retro obituaries on mentalfloss.com, check them out. It's one of my
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favorite features we do on the site. We posthumously celebrate some of the relatively unsung luminaries
3:04
of the past. From early 20th century snake handler Grace Olive Wiley to pioneering fighter pilot
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Eugene Bullard. An aquabib is one who drinks water, rather than alcohol. While someone who
3:13
is ambibulous, a word coined by H.L. Mencken, is like an omnivore when it comes to drinking
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In other words, a person who will drink just about anything. Mencken described himself as
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such, saying he was "...prepared to admit some merit in every alcoholic beverage ever devised.
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There's actually a liquor store in Minneapolis called ambibulous in honor of Mencken's coinage
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And for people with similar interests, it'd behoove you to know some words for large bottles of wine
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There's a bit of regional variation, but generally what we think of as a standard bottle of wine is 750 milliliters. A bottle twice that size is known as a magnum
3:44
which you may have heard before. Depending on the type of wine, a jeroboam can measure either 3 or 4.5 liters. 6 liters is a Methuselah
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a 12-liter vessel is called a Balthazar, and a 15-liter bottle is a Nebuchadnezzar
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If you consume too much of a Nebuchadnezzar, you might end up talking a bunch of Baraguan
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That word from the 1600s refers to gibberish. Here's a couple of words that can help you navigate the choppy waters of online discourse
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An ultracrepidarian is someone who talks about a subject outside their own expertise
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And when two ultracrepidarians engage in an endless argument beneath some random
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celebrity's tweet, it's likely that the two parties are anasinous, or equally stupid
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literally something like one ass. One or the other might also be relipotent
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inclined to ranting haranguing or invective They might even have a backfiving gazette which is a German word for a face that seems to call out to be slapped or punched We don condone violence at Mental Floss but we do heartily endorse amazing German words for
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otherwise hard-to-verbalized notions. Here's my personal favorite such word from German. Literally something like grief-baken. It refers to the weight you might gain when going through
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a difficult time, like a breakup. Emotional overeating, baby. Relatable. Axorious. This is basically the adjective for a wife-guy, used to describe someone excessively
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fond of or submissive to a wife, according to Merriam-Webster.com. And if you spend too
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much time on social media, you may find yourself ramfeasled, worn out, or exhausted. That might
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lead to a case of metutalopoeia, which is basically waking up on the wrong side of the
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bed. Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee and my metutalopoeia subsides does not make
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for a pithy mug. It would be difficult to fit an ABCdery onto a mug at all. It can refer
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of the alphabet in general, or more specifically, to basically what's a special kind of acrostic
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poem in which each line or verse starts with the next letter of the alphabet
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When you're walking around a supermarket in a foreign country, somewhat baffled by the
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unrefrigerated milk and the unfamiliar packaged food mascots, you're experiencing a mild case
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of du paysement. That French word refers to the disorienting feeling you might experience when
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you're out of your normal environment. And if you're staying at a hostel on that trip, you might experience lait calif. It means something like to dog it in Hebrew, in other
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words to deal with a less-than-idea living or travel situation. On the other end of the spectrum
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we have hygge. That Danish word refers to something like what we might call coziness in English
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The website for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark describes it as taking time away from the daily rush to relax and enjoy life's quieter pleasures
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Cofune is a word from Brazil that refers to tenderly running your fingers through your lover's
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hair. That might be a bit harder to do if your lover's hair is eulatricous, woolly or curly
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And you won't be able to do it to their chin if they're in Birbik. That just refers to someone
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someone without a beard. If your lover is an agilast, or someone who never laughs, it may eventually lead to lead toast
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That's a Czech word that author Milan Kundera describes as a state of torment created by
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the sudden sight of one's own misery. A fairly dispiriting practice is rhino-till exomania, the excessive and potentially pathological
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habit of picking one's own nose. The game Telephone relies on otosis the phenomenon of mishearing or misinterpreting words that one hears A donkey man is of course a man with the brains of a donkey But outside of the It Always Sunny in Philadelphia universe it was used to describe the person who ran a ship engine room That came from the so donkey boiler or donkey
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engine. That engine, usually powered by steam, wasn't the main one driving the ship's movement
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It was more of an auxiliary system to assist with things like loading cargo or raising sails
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Cephalomancy involves a donkey man of a different sort. It's a method of telling the future
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or otherwise supernaturally divining information using a donkey's head. The head was basically
7:13
cooked and the movement and noises of its bones were interpreted to intuit secrets of the universe
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Obviously. If I was around for one of those cephalomancy sessions, I'd probably
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absquatulate or leave abruptly. If you want to unnecessarily fancy up some quotidian terms
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here's a couple for you. Instead of belching or burping, you can discuss erectation. And when a
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baby is incorrectly mimicking speech, instead of calling it baby talk, you can call it lelation
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Someone whose house burned down is an eucaligon. Personally, if I went through that kind of trauma
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and someone broke out that word on me, I would find it horrigust. That blend of horrible and
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disgusting was coined by Roald Dahl. Still, it wouldn't be appropriate to fustigate them
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At least, not literally. That word can figuratively refer to criticizing someone harshly
7:57
or literally to hitting someone with a club. When my Scrabble opponent plays five overlapping
8:02
two-letter words at once and outscores my six-letter beauty, I want to fustigate them
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One example of a less common two-letter word which is acceptable in the game
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A-a, a type of lava with a broken, jagged surface. That's opposed to pahoehoe, another word from Hawaii which describes a smooth
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undulating lava flow. Here are some words that hit close to home for me
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An ilurophile is a cat lover. A gutling is a great eater. Or a glutton
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What are you trying to say, John? That was really **** talking about. I mean, you're not wrong
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And if you're gluttonous specifically with omelets, you're sort of engaging in ophigy
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or literally egg-eating. The term generally is used to refer to a specific process in which
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the developing embryos of some sharks eat their potential siblings while still in their mother's
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uterus, as the Australian Museum says. But that's not going to stop me from complimenting people in
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the diner on their ophigy. Drop your favorite word in the comments below. No definitions allowed
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We'll go through and try to guess the meaning to the best of our ability. Thanks for watching
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