Words Wednesday: 20 Words That Never Were

If you are in the business of writing a dictionary there are no shortage of words to choose from.

In fact there are often far too many to print and some just have to fall by the wayside.

Here are 2o words that were considered for inclusion by the editors at Chambers but which never actually made it into print.

berkship – the state of being a berk
car-cooning – making one’s car more homelike in preparation for spending a lot of
time commuting
celebrat – a badly behaved celebrity
chillihead – someone who is knowledgeable about chilli
cinquasept – a visit to one’s lover between the hours of five and seven o’clock

cowpat roulette – a now outlawed German game in which villagers bet on which plot
of land would be first to receive a cow’s calling card
gonking – pretending to play a guitar while listening to music in one’s own home
gorehound – an aficionado of violent horror movies
grille-peerer  – one of a group of clergymen who would haunt the stacks in the London
Library in order to look up the skirts of women browsing on the floors above
hamster buying -  buying large quantities of things in order to hoard them

inphulaphist -  a collector of cigar bands
jogger’s paw -  inflammation of a dog’s paw caused by its owner dragging it along
while jogging
kini -  the bottom half only of a bikini
lethologica -  the inability to remember the right word
neutercane -  a tropical storm that has not yet been given one of the names reserved
for hurricanes

nutrobabble -  jargon used by the health food industry
pocillovy -  the hobby of collecting egg cups
vegucate -  to teach about vegetarianism
weirdiana -  outlandish collectible items
yippies -  young imprisoned professionals (usually fraudsters)

Next week we look at some very formal words for some very familiar things.

* All words in this blog post have been supplied by The 12^th edition of The Chambers Dictionary. ISBN 97805501002379

Tagged as: Words Wednesday