Will le Fleming

There are, as people who delight in such trivia well know, words for many, many things that do not need to be named. Words for the irrational fear of beards, priests, buttons, hieroglyphs. Words for types of stitches, particles, wood grains.

Not one for pogonophobics… Image: flickr.com/Ayleen Gaspar

My favourite recent acquisition, kindly supplied by a friend, is a word dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of desirable sexual partners amongst haystacks at night. Sprunt, in case you were wondering (and you should have been wondering).

It is in fact impossible to open a page of a reasonably good dictionary and not be struck by a word the existence of which you had never suspected, and the use of which you will never attempt. To prove this theory I have just opened a dictionary to three random pages. Without any effort or need to dredge unduly I thereby discovered lutescent, paw-paw… Continue reading →