Perfectly OT: Languishing words

[Bloomfield]

The pride and joy of the English language are its many many words. But what good are they, if they are not used? There are too many words that languish in disuse and sullen idleness. I say: let's take the language back and start again to use these hapless words.

So, please, list any words you would like to hear or read more frequently.

I'll start, to break the ice, with just three:

Feckless
Example: I assure you, Nanohedron is not the feckless idiot he appears. On the contrary.

Vim
Example: Incensed and agitated by Dale's words, I had just laid out my argument in detail, and with a good deal of vim, when my flow of prose was checked by the sound of his snoring.

Limpid
Example: And then, with limpid words she traced the Muse's inspiration in her post.

[Blarney Pilgrim]

So many of these OT posts are nothing but flapdoodle.

Steve

[MarkB]

Ah Bloom you're such a chaffer

MarkB

[markv]

Quit your lollygagging you rapscallion you!


That fine pair brought to you by my dear departed grandmother Gladys, who used them nearly every time my brother and I were in her care.

Mark V.

[herbivore12]

Feckless
Example: I assure you, Nanohedron is not the feckless idiot he appears. On the contrary.

He's feckful? Or just fecked?

[Walden]

If mayhap, I were to use such a word as that first one, I might risk being misunderstood to be saying something rather obscene. The more precise effectless, of which it is a corruption, might be more communicative, methinks.

[fancypiper]

Too much male bovine feces for me!

[TelegramSam]

Due to the hebetudinous nature of this post, I must abnegate participation.

[MarkB]

I am spending toooo much time futzing and lollygabbing on this board with all you chaffers.

MarkB

[IDAwHOa]

I suffer from echolalia.
You suffer from echolalia?
Yes, I suffer from echolalia....

[The Weekenders]

Most people don't realize that my continued and committed use of the word "reckon" is not homage to Jed Clampett but rather 18th century English. Reckon did not get transformed, though, like victuals (vittles) and vermin (varmints), so the confusion is understandable.

Its a very fine word, connected somehow to Norman French, no doubt (reconnaissance) and Sax. know (proving the k was once pronounced, btw) and all those Latin cog-words, and Scots "ken" (or however they spell it). Better than "guess" because it seems to imply more pre-determination or calculation, especially in the maritime context.

It was likely in Capt. James Cook vocabulary as well as Founding Fathers. .

Also, imho, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the most sustained, elegant use of the English language I have encountered. I loved reading those books, sometimes speaking out loud the sentences to hear the usage. I guess it was their Enlightenment values, knowledge of Latin and Greek, that drew them to certain words. I know they favored Norman/Latin over Anglo-Saxon choices.

[jim_mc]

What a bunch of gadflies.

[Walden]

Most people don't realize that my continued and committed use of the word "reckon" is not homage to Jed Clampett but rather 18th century English. Reckon did not get transformed, though, like victuals (vittles) and vermin (varmints), so the confusion is understandable.

Reckon is standard English.

[FJohnSharp]

People don't use the word 'niggardly' very much. Tom Clancy used it three times in one novel, which was the very last book of his that I will ever read--not because of that word but because he used it THREE times. I just can't stand him anymore.

BTW--The word means cheap, miserly.

[The Weekenders]

Yeah, that word caused a ruckus here in Calaforny. Some darker-complected folks thot a city councilman was defaming them in describing budgetary practices.
So its easier to just not use it.

And Walden, it may be standard English but few here use it except me.