None come to mind right this minute...but I know exactly what you mean.

Last weekend DH & I were talking on one of our dog walks about some of the weird things we did as kids (before video games, way back when you had to entertain yourself, LOL).

DH used to write columns of big numbers and add them up for fun. I used to keep lists of my favorite words and I also enjoyed diagraming sentences...

Anyway, my heart does a little cheer when someone says, or I read, the precise word that crystallizes the meaning of what they're trying to convey.

Geesh, I thought I'd become cool along the way, but I guess I'm still a little nerdy.

Flummoxed is one that gets rolled out periodically. I like it!

curmudgeon.....and sacerdotal....and if you have a sacerdotal curmudgeon you really have a total loser....or as they said a few years ago an LBT.
Linda C

I am a confirmed Christmas curmudgeon. I heard 10 minutes of holiday muzac the other day and I went into curmudgeon mode.

I laughed at a friend who used two terms that sounded so old fashioned to me. He used the term "charley horse" to describe sore muscles (actually it means a muscle cramp so he was old-fashioned and wrong). Another time he said something about being a "ginger driver" when he was talking about driving a new car. That cracked me up. His parents were a lot older when he was born, so he seems to have a lot of terms that came from waaaay back.

The other day I was looking at a picture of someone whose front tooth stuck out. I said to my 32 yearold co-worker that the woman in the picture looked like the dragon in Kukla Fran and Ollie. He had no idea what I was talking about. (Do you?)

Pam, I remember watching Kukla, Fran and Ollie! Dang, I am getting old....

Question for you wordies: I just finished listening to a book where a word was used that I'd never heard before and I can't find in the dictionary. It sounds like sweegenerous. I don't know how it's spelled because I listened to the book so didn't see it in print. I looked in the dictionary under the different spellings I could think of but nothing came up. Any ideas?

Of course I know Kukla, Fran and Ollie. And I know what a charley horse is and we each get them occasionally.

Sweegenerous? Use it in a sentence, please, Lowspark. Or at least sort of approximately how it was used in the book?

I use the word foozle to mean a little piece of lint and it makes me smile - oh let me get that little foozle off of your sweater!

And there is a word that is eluding me, its just out of my memory by a little teeny bit - I'll remember it probably as soon as I log off!

Icouldadid.

I've always like "sashayed" myself; some people stroll, some saunter, but if you've seen a person sashay down the street, you will know it.

Snarky. I love that word. It's so perfect when someone is being all mean and nasty to say they are 'snarky'.

Wonder where that word came from ? Is it even in the dictionary? I need to go look!

Yep it's in the dictionary alright!

Lowspark, I suspect you're looking for
"sui generis [(sooh-ee, sooh-eye jen-uh-ris)]

A person or thing that is unique, in a class by itself: "She is an original artist; each of her paintings is sui generis." From Latin, meaning "of its own kind."
"

BTW, it's "cuckolded", no "h". From similar roots to "cuckoo", and for the same reasons :-)

Colleen you beat me by a hair!! LOL!
In the same category as "foozle" we speak of kack and fuvvah.
( actually they are spoken words so I have never spelled them before.)
They are types of spots that get on clothing or upholstery...
As in "Watch your sleeve! You have some kack on it." Or" she was such a mess...kack all over the fromt of her blouse."
Then there's fuvvah...as in "Come here....you have a little fuvvah on your jacket...let me get it"...and then you proceed to scrap at it with your fingernail.
Kack needs to be moistened and rubbed to remove....fuvvah can be scraped off with a fingernail.
Neither word is in the dictionary!

The other week I used the word gobsmacked (to describe how shocked and stunned I was at something), and it was so much fun I decided to try to work it in more often!

Divagate - to wander aimlessly. I just like the way it sounds.

quidam - an unknown person.

My grandmother used to call someone who mumbled "flannelmouthed".

Fuh-duh-duh. That's what my husband calls that little buldge of skin between the armpit and the chest, it sort of buldges when you have on a tight bra. Fuh-duh-duh.

sui generis !! Yes, thank you! That's it!!

The author was describing his father (the whole book was essentially about his father and how his upbringing negatively affected his entire life) and in a couple of instances the description was meant to convince us that his father was unique in certain ways. I did get the gist of the meaning based on the context but I had never heard the word before and I like to see the actual dictionary definition of new words in addition to gleaning the meaning from the context.

The book, in case you're interested was Lost in America by Sherwin B. Nuland. I don't recommend the book because I found it to be a sort of "poor me, look what I had to grow up with" story. The story itself was actually an intriguing memoir, but the point of it was that essentially his father was to blame for all of the author's troubles throughout life, even into adulthood long after the father had died.

Considering the fact that the father, although inept and selfish in many ways, was blameless in a lot of what shaped his life and his fathering abilities, and the much more horrendous upbringings countless others have endured and overcome, I found the point of the book to be too self-pitying and blame-casting.

Anyway, thanks for clearing up that word for me! I shoulda just come here first!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Lost in America

I'm of French-Canadian descent. Though my parents are 2nd generation US citizens, their first language as children was French - Canadian French. I spoke it as a child, but it ended with me. My sister, 8 yrs. younger, never learned it.

However, there are still lots of expressions that my family, even my own kids, use around home that hark back to it. When Linda posted about the lint on someone's clothes all I could think of was "Minnou." A minnou is a little tuft of lint, or thread, or hair that is stuck to something it shouldn't be on. As in, "Let me get that minnou off your navy blazer." Prounounced "mean new."

And pretty much everyone who had cats in my hometown had one named Minnou.

Finally remembered - dumfnoodle - as in "what a dumfnoodle I am cause I couldn't remember this word" - or "what a dumfnoodle she was cause she let the water boil out of the broccoli pot and now the house stinks and the pot is ruined".

I love every response! Thanks so much for sharing your word-fun :-)

Alexa

And Woodie - dumfnoodle is hilarious! I am soooooooooo going to remember that - at least I will the next time I burn the broccoli! LOLOLOLOLOLOL!

Amck - I'm confused. I dated a French Canadian girl, whose birthday very coincidentally is today. Anyway she had a cat named Minou (one N) and she told me that it meant "cat". And that every cat she had ever owned was named Minou. An online dictionary confirms this translation. Maybe your fuzzy was named after a cat and not the other way around? LOL!

Anyway Minou got lost and never returned so I gave her a new cat and we decided to be original and call her Chat.

I thought minou was what a cat said....rather like naming an American cat Meow...or a French rooster Kickareekee....or a Chinese dog Wang Wang...

My Scots in-laws (and now me :-) ) say "hurple" (rhymes with "purple") when we mean "limp" or "hobble".

Well, I swan.

My father, born in, I think, 1923, was the 2nd youngest of 12 children, so not only his parents but his siblings were from an "earlier generation" & spoke accordingly.

They said things like,
"be smart now" (when a child was acting up)
& "a right smart" (a pretty good sized bit of something, as "a right smart bit of money")

can't think of others right now.

I love "gobsmacked".

I like Befuddled.
Reminds me of Elmer Fudd.

I feel this way often, so maybe it's just that I can relate! Hee hee.

Deanna

foodonastump, re: minou ; I equate that to the word kitty, an affectionate word for cat .

The sound a cat makes in french is spelled miaou , looks odd , lol....

Prognostications! My colleague just used it today. I am a word junkie and get my daily fix by signing up for "Word of the Day" on dictionary.com, which is a fun web site. I go there often! Plus I get a word a day in my e-mail, but I am getting overrun. I try not to delete the word until I really know it. I think I have about 60 words piled up!

My current favorite is "egregious", although I've liked "gobsmacked" ever since Collen used it once to me.

So, those french speaking members: My great-grandmother from Canada used to use a phrase when someone was losing their temper and it translated pretty loosely to "rising faster than a milk soup" which was pretty appropriate.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the french version.....

Annie

Annie, it's something you would accuse someone of being, if they boil with anger rapidly and explode, such as how milk rises quite fast into a boil and overflows.

We'll say, " Tu es soupe au lait", "you are milk soup"

Thanks again to everyone for the contributions. I have had a wonderful time reading every single post.

Alexa

Shan't - I still use that word, but people look at me with this puzzled expression on their face.
Harvey Milquetoast - no one knows what I am talking about when I describe someone that way.
Clare

I do, Clare :-)
"Shan't" is a great word, but I imagine it has dropped out of favour as few say "shall" any more either.

I'm a little late to this topic, but have enjoyed reading the posts. Here's a word that is really fun to say: "Indubitably" (unquestionable, too apparent to be doubted).

seagrass

One of DH's favorites that I think he made up is.... "Fuster Cluck". Sort of self explanatory (wink).

Alexa

Ah Fluster Cluck and Bass Ackwards are staples in our vocabulary. Pin Head makes it in occasionally, too.

Nihilism... one of those words you never really know the meaning of. Not a fun word but one that has followed me for decades. If I ever find the meaning the word will disappear.

Serendipity?... perhaps the cooking forum.... expecting one thing yet finding something valuable that you were not looking for.

: )
lyra

Reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges from "The Big Lebowski" movie by the Coen brothers:

Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter: No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.

Two words/phrases I've heard lately made me think of this thread.

bush league
and
canoodle

I like bush league because it's just the perfect word to describe some behaviors.
Canoodle, I just like how it sounds.

Maybe you ought to check your definitions, because "bush league" is an adjective and "canoodle" is a verb.
But I suppose you could say "Stop with the whining! that's so bush league"...
In which case it would become an adverb.../
Kaysarah!LOL!
Linda C

Yeah, Linda. Not sure what you're referring to. I said "bush league ... the perfect word to describe some behaviors". That makes it an adjective. It's also an adjective in your sentence (not an adverb) since whining is a gerund making it a noun.

And yes, canoodle is a verb.

Cutting a shine = pitching a fit!

Fletchurism: Philosophy of eating, chewing slowly.

millennium = 1000 years
Century = 100 years
score = 20 years
Decade = 10 years
Luster = 5 years

dcarch

Here are some phrases I used to hear in Texas:

I reckon.

I 'spect.

Terrectly.

Y'all come back now, you hear?

I'm not used to hearing "y'all", and so it will be a bit of culture shock when I go back to Texas to visit.

Lars