Help me secretly educate children!

December 6, 2007 5:12 AM

What are some cool Words of the Week for my kids' bookshop?

I've been running a tiny childrens' bookshop for about a month, and one of the things I've been trying to institute is a 'word of the week'. I've had some good feedback from the kids and their parents, but I'm running out of 'cool' words.

Basically, I'm looking for (British) English words that sound funny - maybe they have a tongue-twister element - or that have an interesting meaning, but one that is easily understandable to kids. Ideally, they should also be words that are unfamiliar to most adults, and I'd prefer to avoid anything too slangy.

So far, we've had discombobulated (confused), petrichor (the smell of summer rain), copacetic (cool, fine), borborygmus (tummy rumbling, from this thread) and the current word is bagatelle (a small, unimportant thing).

What words do you think would fit the bill?

posted by featherboa to writing & language (26 comments total)

persiflage

flocculent

osculate

and of course

sesquipedalian

I could go on...
posted by ubiquity at 5:22 AM on December 6, 2007

Subscribe to the "Word of the Day" at dictionary.com and you'll get a good word every day.
posted by JimN2TAW at 5:22 AM on December 6, 2007

callipygian
defenestration
posted by jrossi4r at 5:49 AM on December 6, 2007

Cantankerous

Onomatopoeia

Lackadaisical

Avuncular

Obstreperous

Brouhaha

Soliloquy

Defenestrate

Happy teaching!
posted by ersatz at 5:54 AM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

misericord
jassid
posted by methylsalicylate at 5:55 AM on December 6, 2007

palimpsest
plenipotentiary
posted by rabbitsnake at 6:04 AM on December 6, 2007

undulate
posted by mccxxiii at 6:39 AM on December 6, 2007

pomegranate
obstreperous
Previously on...
posted by ceri richard at 7:48 AM on December 6, 2007

slugabed
trencherman
scuttlebutt

You may find many months of Word-Of-The-Day in the Reference.com archive.
posted by nilihm at 7:50 AM on December 6, 2007

benthic
brassard
kyphosis
posted by mattbucher at 8:01 AM on December 6, 2007

I forgot infundibulum.
posted by ubiquity at 8:53 AM on December 6, 2007

I'll just throw one favorite so that I don't get stuck reading the dictionary this morning: prelapsarian
posted by rhizome at 9:01 AM on December 6, 2007

Outlandish!
posted by thebrokenmuse at 10:22 AM on December 6, 2007

There are some fun words if you head over to freerice.com. The first several rounds are nothing exciting, but if you work your way up, you'll find plenty of more interesting ones.

Related thread on the blue.
posted by bassjump at 10:29 AM on December 6, 2007

serendipity (for extra secret education you may want to throw in the story of the Three Princes of Serendip, from whence the word comes)
gallivant
clandestine
ossify
feckless
gourmand
pillory
squattocracy
posted by Kattullus at 11:03 AM on December 6, 2007

How about the synonyms of balm?
unguent
salve
liniment
unction
posted by phirleh at 11:40 AM on December 6, 2007

kerfuffle
posted by zebra3 at 11:54 AM on December 6, 2007

3rd-ing Defenestrate
Obfuscate
glottis (it's fun to pronounce the t's in glottis/glottal as a glottal stop to show where the glottis is)
posted by gauchodaspampas at 12:06 PM on December 6, 2007

ablution
finial
eschew
mitigate
disgruntled
bellicose
pugnacious
ablative
posted by plinth at 1:59 PM on December 6, 2007

fisticuffs
ululate
posted by mattholomew at 2:41 PM on December 6, 2007

taradiddle
posted by PY at 2:52 PM on December 6, 2007

erumpent
absquatulate
tergiversate
perambulate
circumlocution
the wonderful slogan "eschew obfuscation"
abnegate
stentorian
pate
onomatopoeia is great, kids love thinking of examples, and you can run a little contest for memorizing its spelling (pretty easy to memorize in chunks of three letters).
philtrum - this is a great one, everyone always wonders what this thing is called
epidermis
ullage
More obscure concepts, but great words:
incunabulum
sastrugi
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:16 PM on December 6, 2007

antebellum or antediluvian
nevus
omphaloskepsis
benthic
macerate
osculate
mellifluous
buss
prevaricate
prestidigitation
legerdemain
polydactyl (eg a polydactyl cat)
lacuna
malapropism
spoonerism
truculent
ignominious
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:28 PM on December 6, 2007

serendipity
widdershins
borborygmus
sternutation
syzygy
apogee and perigee
zenith and apex
sylph
penultimate
prolix
apoplectic
brobdignagian? might be too much.
lilliputian
quixotic (you could do a whole series from books)
bugbear
snood
crepuscular


and here are other links that will help, stolen shamelessly from a few related Ask threads:
internet archive of endangered, special or fun words
English words with uncommon propertiesand a collection of word oddities and trivia and some word-based Bongard problems (should you decide to do a series of trivia)
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:57 PM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

pelagic
scrofulous
obnubilated (Recently discovered in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.)
ble[t]cherous
anent
posted by Bruce H. at 6:02 PM on December 6, 2007

Wow, fantastic! Thank you so much everyone. Defenestration is the next word of the week, and I should have enough to keep us going for quite a while! If you're interested in keeping track of what words I use, you can look at the blog listed in my profile.
posted by featherboa at 7:09 AM on December 8, 2007