Comments on: Help me secretly educate children!

Question: Help me secretly educate children!

featherboa — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:12:08 -0800

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?

By: ubiquity

ubiquity — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:22:08 -0800

persiflage

flocculent

osculate

and of course

sesquipedalian

I could go on...

By: JimN2TAW

JimN2TAW — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:22:53 -0800

Subscribe to the "Word of the Day" at dictionary.com and you'll get a good word every day.

By: jrossi4r

jrossi4r — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:49:09 -0800

callipygian
defenestration

By: ersatz

ersatz — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:54:10 -0800

Cantankerous

Onomatopoeia

Lackadaisical

Avuncular

Obstreperous

Brouhaha

Soliloquy

Defenestrate

Happy teaching!

By: methylsalicylate

methylsalicylate — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:55:57 -0800

misericord
jassid

By: rabbitsnake

rabbitsnake — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:04:51 -0800

palimpsest
plenipotentiary

By: mccxxiii

mccxxiii — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:39:47 -0800

undulate

By: ceri richard

ceri richard — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:48:10 -0800

pomegranate
obstreperous
Previously on...

By: nilihm

nilihm — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:50:18 -0800

slugabed
trencherman
scuttlebutt

You may find many months of Word-Of-The-Day in the Reference.com archive.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:01:35 -0800

benthic
brassard
kyphosis

By: ubiquity

ubiquity — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:53:59 -0800

I forgot infundibulum.

By: rhizome

rhizome — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:01:44 -0800

I'll just throw one favorite so that I don't get stuck reading the dictionary this morning: prelapsarian

By: thebrokenmuse

thebrokenmuse — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:22:20 -0800

Outlandish!

By: bassjump

bassjump — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:29:08 -0800

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.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:03:22 -0800

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

By: phirleh

phirleh — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:40:23 -0800

How about the synonyms of balm?
unguent
salve
liniment
unction

By: zebra3

zebra3 — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:54:56 -0800

kerfuffle

By: gauchodaspampas

gauchodaspampas — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:06:53 -0800

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)

By: plinth

plinth — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:59:08 -0800

ablution
finial
eschew
mitigate
disgruntled
bellicose
pugnacious
ablative

By: mattholomew

mattholomew — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:41:42 -0800

fisticuffs
ululate

By: PY

PY — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:52:09 -0800

taradiddle

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:16:27 -0800

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

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:28:45 -0800

antebellum or antediluvian
nevus
omphaloskepsis
benthic
macerate
osculate
mellifluous
buss
prevaricate
prestidigitation
legerdemain
polydactyl (eg a polydactyl cat)
lacuna
malapropism
spoonerism
truculent
ignominious

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:57:52 -0800

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)

By: Bruce H.

Bruce H. — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:02:13 -0800

pelagic
scrofulous
obnubilated (Recently discovered in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.)
ble[t]cherous
anent

By: featherboa

featherboa — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:09:59 -0800

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.