My boss likes to challenge me with esoteric words that come up on one of his "word of the day" lists. Today, he stumped me with ostrobogulous, which isn't even in Dictionary.com. Wiktionary, though, has this to say:
(humorous) Slightly risqué or indecent; bizarre, interesting, or unusual.
So there you go.
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So, it describes pretty much every night in the bars I frequent...
ReplyDeleteWiktionary lists the OED as its source, so I went straight to the horse's mouth and there it is. Apparently (and not surprisingly), though, it is a made-up word, so I'm not sure if it really counts as a "word." It's not like the oodles of words that Shakespeare made up that have since slipped into common usage. OED has quotations spanning from 1951 to 1972... so it hasn't been used in the last fifty years? Humorous, perhaps. I'm gonna say "no."
ReplyDeleteSo, maybe a bit like "floccinaucinihilipilification"? But Dictionary.com quite specifically calls "flocci..." a word: "...is quite the mouthful and is a very rarely used word."
ReplyDeletePhilosophical question: the phrase you used, "made-up word," includes the word "word," so can't a made-up word be a word? You seem to deny that ("...it is a made-up word, so I'm not sure if it really counts as a 'word.'"), but what term other than "word" can one use to describe "ostrobogulous"?
We're in murky territory here. If someone were to say "splunge" to me (as they say in a "Retarded Animal Babies" cartoon*), I'd say, "That's not even a word." But if someone were to say "supercalifragilisticexpialodocious," I'd say that that's a word. A whimsical and rarely used word, but a word all the same.
I have no idea how authoritative AmazingTalker.com is, but the site says: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is used to describe something that is extremely good, super, amazing, or excellent. It is a real [word] and is listed in most dictionaries. It was made famous in the 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins, which features a song that uses the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."** (I see that Merriam-Webster.com has a better explanation of the word's origins.) Now, granted, simply asserting that something is a real word doesn't make it a real word. But if it's not a real word, why is it listed in dictionaries? Why is "ostrobogulous" listed in Wiktionary as well as in a hoary authority like the OED?
Final point, probably stolen from a movie: aren't all words, ultimately, "made-up words"? (That feels like a "Guardians of the Galaxy" reference.)
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*I just did a search for the "Retarded Animal Babies" cartoon on YouTube, and lo and behold: a bunch of other results for "splunge" came up. The word's apparently been around for quite a while. Maybe it is a real word.
**I see that the site is something like a Wiki, with regular Joes contributing answers. So the site's authoritativeness is questionable at best. But its claim that "super..." is "listed in most dictionaries" is probably true.
I was only being partly serious. I am aware of the irony in "made-up word." But it is indeed true that all words are made-up--that's the whole point of semiotics, after all! (Well, one of the points, I suppose.)
ReplyDeleteWhen I say it's not a "real word," I basically mean that I see no justification for adding it to my vocabulary and will attempt to forget it, as human beings seem to have done over the past fifty years. Ironically, that will probably be harder to do now, after all this.