by Kevin Burton
I know I shouldn’t be doing this. But here’s my excuse up front: The dictionary made me do it!
There is more than enough bad blood, ill manners, insincerity and name calling to go around these days. Nevertheless, Merriam-Webster dictionary provides you today with entirely new and creative ways to describe those people we could surely live without.
I am at least an accomplice to this. My fingerprints are all over the keyboard of the computer on the first floor of the worldwide Burton Media headquarters, from which this post has flowed.
So work these terms into your casual contentious conversations, but please don’t mention my name:
1-Smatchet: a contemptible unmannerly person
English is a language that contains an embarrassment of riches for when one wants to say something mean about someone else. If you need to refer to a contemptable person you may choose from blighter, cockloche dandiprat, dirtbag, dogbolt, shagrag, stinkard… you get the picture.
So why do we need smatchet? Well, because there are a lot of contemptible people out there!
2-Cupboard-Lover: one who insincerely professes love for the sake of gain
This delightful term is fashioned from the earlier noun cupboard love. Rather than give a dry and precise definition of this we shall instead quote from our earliest citation for cupboard love, which comes from 18th century British court records, The Proceedings at the New Bayley (1756):
“Now, there is a Kind of Love in the Old Stile, termed Cupboard Love; and it often happens, that what People judge to be an Intrigue with a young Woman, turns out, on a nearer View, to be only an Intrigue with a Leg of Mutton and Turnips. This Kind of Love is frequently seen among certain Gentlemen at Counry Quarters, the Curates in City Parishes, Attornies Clerks, and young Barrister, and may, doubtless, descend to all Persons who have larger Stomachs than Purses. So, Gentlemen, go out.”
3-Fustilugs: a ponderous clumsy person
Fustilugs is one of those words that does a certain amount to renew one’s faith in the notion that the English language makes sense. For even if you had never before come across this term there is no way you would ever mistake it for a compliment; it is an obscure word that manages to still be fairly self-explanatory. It comes from combining the words fusty (“not fresh, stale”) and lug (“a heavy clumsy fellow”).
4-Prickmedainty: an affectedly nice person; a fop.
Prickmedainty, a word that has primarily been used in Northern England and Scotland, may be employed as either a noun or an adjective. It comes from compounding three words, which are exactly the ones you would expect, prick, me, and dainty.
When the word first began to be used in the early 16th century it had more of a sense of “someone who cares overmuch about his clothing or appearance.”
5-Ultracrepidarian: one who is presumptuous and offers advice or opinions beyond one’s sphere of knowledge
The meaning of this word comes from a story in antiquity, in which the famed Greek painter Apelles one day heard a cobbler criticizing the way he had rendered a foot in a painting. Apelles then said to the shoemaker something very cutting and witty about how he shouldn’t presume to judge beyond his station.
The exact remark has, unfortunately, been lost in time, but since the Latin phrase ultra crepidam means “beyond the sole,” we may imagine that Apelles used this, or something similar, in his rebuke. Hence, an ultracrepidarian is one who, as a shoemaker might, goes “beyond the sole,” and offers advice on matters they perhaps should leave alone.
6-Cumber-World: a worthless person or thing; one who cumbers the world
Some words are examples of their definition; sesquipedalian, a word which means “having many syllables” may be used to describe itself. And then there are words that definitely are not examples of themselves, such as cumber-world.
It is unclear why such a useful word for describing useless things should have fallen into disuse and obscurity. Cumber-world and the considerably more common adjective cumbersome both come from the verb cumber, which originally meant “to destroy utterly” but also has the sense of “to hinder” and “to burden.”
7-Smell-Feast: one given to finding out and getting invited to good feasts
The smell-feast is a distinctive kind of sponger; not one who imposes on friends for lodging and money, but rather focuses their efforts on being invited to dinner. We have all of us known a smell-feast, even if we lacked the word with which to describe this particular creature.
8-Flibbertigibbet: a silly flighty person
Flibbertigibbet is one of many incarnations of the Middle English word flepergebet, meaning “gossip” or “chatterer.” (Others include “flybbergybe,” “flibber de’ Jibb,” and “flipperty-gibbet.”) It is a word of onomatopoeic origin, created from sounds that were intended to represent meaningless chatter.
Shakespeare apparently saw a devilish aspect to a gossipy chatterer; he used “flibbertigibbet” as the name of a devil in King Lear. This use never caught on, but the devilish connotation of the word reappeared over 200 years later when Sir Walter Scott used “Flibbertigibbet” as the nickname of an impish urchin in the novel Kenilworth. The impish meaning derived from Scott’s character was short-lived and was laid to rest by the 19th-century’s end, leaving us with only the “silly flighty person” meaning.
9-Epistemophiliac: one who excessively strives for knowledge, or has a preoccupation with it
A person who loves knowledge is a thing of beauty. However, a person who loves knowledge just a bit too much can quickly transition from “thing of beauty” to “person you’d really rather not sit next to at a dinner party.”
The epistemophiliac is the sort of person who falls into the latter category. The word is a fairly recent addition to our language, appearing in the middle of the 20th century.
10-Knipperdolling: a religious fanatic
Berndt Knipperdolling was a prominent Anabaptist (a member of a sect of 16th century Protestants who advocated the baptism and church membership of adult believers only), born in Münster at the end of the 15th century. Knipperdolling’s religious views were not shared by some authorities, and he came to an untimely end as a result of them.
While initially knipperdolling was simply used as a term for an Anabaptist, it came to later take on the connotation of religious fanaticism.
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