Coined by Kathyrn Schulz, the word is lapsonym : “a word whose meaning you forget no matter how many times you look it up.” I’d like to think of lapsonym as also applying to a word you forget no matter how many times you look it up. My favorite lapsonym is litotes . Again and again, I have to stop and wonder: what’s the name for the figure of speech that, &c. Or I confuse litotes with apophasis. But probably not after writing this post.
Reader, what’s your favorite (or least favorite) lapsonym?
[I know, all words are made up.]
Saturday, May 30, 2015
A useful made-up word
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comments: 8
Sanguine--Even when I look it up, I don't know what it means. I have a friend who uses it a lot. I think it means to grumpily go along with something, but also bloody, and also someone who tends to be even-tempered. It means too many different things for me to reconcile. Also, I sketch in red and always carry a pencil in my pocket that is marked "sanguine" (CRETACOLOR Sanguine oil/Rötel fett, made in Austria).
That word pulls me back to the four humors, which I always found infuriating in student days. I remember at least one meaning of sanguine because of a sentence in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House: “I’m not very sanguine about good fortune for myself.” That sentence is the only reason I remember the meaning.
"Epicene." It should be, but isn't, some sort of extinct species of horse. I also find the whole "ingenuous / disingenuous" mess far more trouble than it's worth.
Yes, they’re not really opposites, so a confusing pair.
Teleological took me forever to get in my head, while my husband was going through his history degree. Felt so dumb that I had to keep asking him what that meant.
There are a number of crossword answers that I constantly struggle to remember, ATRA for the razor brand is the main one. Just had to look it up to put it here. I know it starts and ends with A, but the middle two letters blur and swim away. Every time. Will not stick in my brain.
ORC stymies me more often than it should, which should make it clear that I don’t know Tolkien.
Pulchritude.
Such an ugly word for beauty. It's so unusual that somewhere along the line I've convinced myself it can't just mean "beauty", even if I get that far in remembering.
David Foster Wallace had a list of words that included pulchritude , all words that don’t describe themselves: big , diminutive , and so on. Pulchritude : exactly!
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