Words: Other

This page is basically for questions about words that aren't covered anywhere else.

For other questions about words, please refer to the Language Index.

Words of the Year

Lots of dictionary publishers announce Words of the Year. The one you're most likely to get asked about in a UK quiz is that chosen by the Oxford University Press, which publishes (among other things) the Oxford English Dictionary. But since Collins is another dictionary published in the UK, I'm listing theirs as well.

Because you're only likely to get asked about the most recent Words of the Year, that's all I'm listing. If you want to know about previous ones, you can check them out on Wikipedia.

Oxford University Press Word of 2022

The rejection of societal expectations and the act of living in an unkempt, hedonistic manner without concern for one's self–image

Goblin mode

Collins English Dictionary Word of 2022

An extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events

Permacrisis

Times

Hebdomad		7 days
Quarantine (originally)		40 days
Quinquagesima		50 days
Lustrum (in ancient Rome)		5 years
Quinquennium		5 years
Decennium		10 years
Quindecennium		15 years
Vicennium		20 years
Sesquicentenary		150 years
Tercentenary		300 years

Chiliad (kill–iad)

1,000 years (or 1,000 of anything)

Opposites, Singulars and Plurals

Opposite of zenith		Azimuth
Opposite of nocturnal		Diurnal
Opposite of Utopia		Dystopia
Feminine of gaffer (i.e. an old countrywoman)		Gammer
Plural of genus (meaning a class or group, particularly of species in taxonomy)		Genera
Singular of graffiti		Graffito
Plural of mongoose		Mongooses
Opposite of Oriental		Occidental
Plural of opus		Opera

Means both to adhere or cling to, and to split or separate

Cleave

Types of Words (etc.)

Parts of Speech

A, an, the		Articles
The definite article (in English)		The
The indefinite article (in English)		A or an
And, or, but, because		Conjunctions
Of, at, to, by, with, from, in, out, up, down (etc.)		Prepositions

Other

A word made up of the initial letters of several other words (e.g. SCUBA, RADAR)		Acronym
A work of literature that omits a certain letter or letters (most often E, because it's the most common)		Lipogram
A word, phrase or sentence that's spelled the same backwards as forward (from Greek, meaning "running again")		Palindrome
A sentence or verse that uses every letter of the alphabet		Pangram

Spelling

This section is about words whose spellings have some unique characteristic. For some difficult–to–spell words, please refer to the separate page, also entitled Spelling.

All five vowels once each, in alphabetical order		ABSTEMIOUS
		FACETIOUS
All five vowels once each, in reverse order		UNCOMPLIMENTARY
		SUBCONTINENTAL
All five vowels and only two consonants		SEQUOIA
Five consecutive vowels		QUEUEING
Shortest word that includes each of the letters A to F		FEEDBACK
Creative respelling of the word 'fish', used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation – first suggested by the English publisher and author Charles Ollier, but often attributed to George Bernard Shaw		GHOTI
Two words that start and end in UND		UNDERGROUND
		UNDERFUND
Starts and ends in HE (common 8–letter word)		HEADACHE
The only two words that end in GRY		ANGRY
		HUNGRY
Four common words that end in DOUS		HAZARDOUS
		HORRENDOUS
		STUPENDOUS
		TREMENDOUS
The only word that ends in AMT		DREAMT
The only word that ends SEDE		SUPERSEDE
Two ten–letter words that start and end with TH		THIRTEENTH
		THOUSANDTH
The three longest single–word palindromes in English (each has 9 letters)		MALAYALAM
		REDIVIDER
		ROTAVATOR
The two longest words that can be typed using only the top row, on a standard keyboard (each has 10 letters)		PROPRIETOR
		TYPEWRITER
Two six–letter words with no vowels		RHYTHM
		SYZYGY
The two longest words that don't repeat any letters (each has 15 letters)		DERMATOGLYPHICS
		UNCOPYRIGHTABLE
Two (closely–related) words with three consecutive pairs of double letters		BOOKKEEPER
		BOOKKEEPING
The only number that, when written as a word, has all its letters in alphabetical order		FORTY
The only number that tells you the number of letters in its name		FOUR

Commonest Words

Most common word in spoken English		I
Most common word in written English		The
Second most common word in written English		Of

Word Origins

Term commonly used in business, derived from the Mediaeval Latin and/or Italian for 'broken bench'		Bankrupt(cy)
Champion Norse warriors who fought with trance–like fury		Berserkers
Believed to have its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain (SOW–in – sow rhymes with cow), marking the end of summer, when animal bones were burnt to ward off evil spirits		Bonfire (bone fire)
Entered the English language in the year 1582, via Turkish and Dutch, derived from the Arabic qahwah		Coffee
Word for a minor fault in a system, first used in English in the US space industry in the mid–1960s; probably from a German or Yiddish word meaning to slip or slide		Glitch
Words on a Ouija board: yes, no and		Goodbye
Comes from the Old French owords for 'death' and 'pledge'		Mortgage
Originally meant ten thousand (from the Greek); has come to mean any indefinitely large number		Myriad
First used in print in If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss (1950), as the name of an imaginary animal; in 1951, Newsweek reported its popular use in Detroit as a synonym for 'drip' or 'square'; popularised in the 1970s by heavy usage in the sitcom Happy Days		Nerd
Comes from a Greek word for a piece of broken pottery – used for voting in ancient Greece		Ostracism
Word coined by Milton to designate the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost; has come to mean (with a simplification of spelling) a state of wild confusion or uproar		Pandæmonium
Word for a furniture removal van: comes from the name of a London furniture warehouse that had previously been used as a bazaar		Pantechnicon
Coined in 1839 by the English polymath John Herschel – although, unknown to Herschel, the equivalent word (photographie) had been used in French in 1834 by Hercules Florence, a French artist working in Brazil		Photography
Introduced in 1780 by a Dublin theatre manager called Daly, for a bet		Quiz
Coined by Horace Walpole, 1754, in a letter to a friend; from the old name for Sri Lanka, after a fairy tale that Walpole had heard; he defined it as “accidental sagacity”		Serendipity
First used by the French Jesuit priest and mathematician Jean Leurechon, in Récréations Mathématiques (1624 – written under the pseudonym Hendrik van Etten)		Thermometer
Originally used for professional assassins and robbers in India		Thug
Name used in India for a hot meal or snack (at any time of day) – originating in the early 19th century during British colonial rule		Tiffin
Word coined in 1912 by the Polish biochemist Kazimierz Funk, for nutrients postulated in 1898 by the English ditto Frederick Hopkins (who in 1929 won the Nobel Prize for the discovery, along with the Dutch physician Christiaan Eijkman)		Vitamin

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24