The Lexicon Obscura

To leave suddenly and without notice — to quietly vanish from a place, a situation, or a commitment, without the inconvenience of explanation or farewell. The specific quality of this departure is important: it is not dramatic. There is no announcement. One moment you are there; the next, through some mechanism that nobody quite observed, you simply are not. The word has a slightly humorous quality that captures the mild absurdity of the act.

Example

“Halfway through the second hour of the dinner party, he absquatulated — coat retrieved quietly, goodbyes not said, gone before anyone registered the empty chair.”

Origin

19th-century American English, a deliberate comic coinage blending abscond, squatulate (itself a mock-Latin invention), and possibly skedaddle. Part of a tradition of elaborate American frontier humorous vocabulary that produced several excellent words and then largely abandoned them.

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Describes the Irish goodbye with considerably more dignity than “Irish goodbye.”

Easily recognizable or conspicuous — having a distinctive quality that makes identification immediate and unmistakable. The person in any crowd whose presence registers before you have consciously looked for them. The building on a street that draws the eye before the others. The writing style that announces its author in the first sentence. Kenspeckle is the word for whatever quality makes something impossible to overlook, without carrying any implication that the conspicuousness is sought or performed.

Example

“He was kenspeckle in any room — not because he tried to be, but because something in the way he moved made him impossible to miss.”

Origin

From the Scottish and Northern English dialect, derived from Old Norse kenna (to know, to recognize) and spak (quick, clever at seeing). One of many excellent words that standard English borrowed from Scottish and then quietly stopped using.

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A better compliment than “you stand out.” Considerably better than “you’re hard to miss.”

An interaction or situation that is rewarding for one participant and unrewarding — or actively unpleasant — for the other. Applies widely: the conversation that one person is thoroughly enjoying while the other watches the clock; the collaboration where one party provides most of the work and the other provides most of the credit; the meeting that exists primarily for the benefit of the person who called it. Recognition of meupareunia is the first step. What happens next is up to you.

Example

“The mentorship had devolved into a meupareunia — he found the sessions energizing and full of insight; she found them long and one-directional.”

Origin

From the Greek meu (mine, for me) and pareunia (lying beside, being together). A clinical coinage that has escaped into the general lexicon and found broader applications in daily life than its origins might suggest.

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You have been on both sides of this. The word does not specify which is worse.

Possessed by an intense desire to write — not merely fond of writing, or competent at it, but genuinely compelled by it in a way that resembles a drive more than a preference. The person for whom the impulse to put words down is constant and not entirely voluntary. The one who takes notes during conversations they should just be having. The one who is slightly elsewhere even when present, because some part of their mind is always composing. There are more scripturient people than the world has good outlets for. This has always been the case.

Example

“She was scripturient from childhood — filling notebooks nobody asked her to fill, writing letters nobody had requested, unable to experience anything without the immediate urge to describe it.”

Origin

From the Latin scripturire (to have a strong desire to write), a desiderative form of scribere (to write). Latin had a grammatical structure specifically for expressing overwhelming urges — a feature English has never replicated and quietly misses.

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If you are reading a blog about obscure words, you are probably this. The word recognizes you.

The state of being infatuated with another person — specifically, the involuntary, intrusive, and consuming variety. Not merely liking someone. Not even love, exactly. The particular cognitive state in which another person occupies an unreasonable proportion of one’s thoughts, in which their reciprocation feels like the most important variable in the known universe, and in which one’s mood is largely a function of the last interaction with them. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term in 1979 because “crush” and “infatuation” were inadequate, and she was right.

Example

“It wasn’t love yet — it was limerence, that early and slightly unhinged state where every text message carries unreasonable weight and a chance encounter can ruin a perfectly good afternoon.”

Origin

Coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book Love and Limerence. The word has no known etymology — Tennov created it as a neutral, non-judgmental term for a state that existing language handled either too romantically or not seriously enough.

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One of the most precisely useful words in this entire series. You have been here. You know exactly what this means.