Today I was at a loss as to what to post. So I gave myself an assignment: write something using three randomly selected words from the dictionary. Casting about for a “random word” function on Dictionary.com, I found none, and then recalled that my predecessor in this position had a rather dog-eared Webster’s. So I used the traditional flip-and-fingernail method, hoping for really juicy words like ‘carbuncle’ and ‘crepuscular’. I got, I kid you not, the following: ‘prejudice’, ‘custom’, and ‘the’. Yes, ‘the’. What a disappointment.
So instead, in honor of carbuncle (the only word I know of that can refer either to a big zit or a precious jewel) and crepuscular (far from the only word I know that sounds much prettier in French), I bring you a list of long, interesting c-words I believe deserve greater use.
crepuscular
copacetic
cerulean
cacaphony
calamity
coruscate
coagulate
cataphract
coprophage
cotillion
Please feel free to add your own. The only rules are: Starts with C and Out of your head, not the dictionary!
Comments
Ehmmm...
conglomeration
cytoplasmic
contrabandsim
cosmopolitanism
copulatory
Cro-Magnon
cancan
centurion
citadel
cogitative
cravat
circa
Ehh… I think I’m done.
Re: Ehmmm...
Good show. I skipped a few that I thought were too specific, but I’ll add them in light of “Cro-Magnon!”
cloaca
cephalapod
cetacean
copepod
More C words
And I’m spent.
conjoint
‘Copacetic’ is a thing of pure evil; it sounds like the name of a laxative. (Which caused me to think of the following: Continually cleaning cloacae is clearly capital (nay! copacetic), claimed a cunning coprophagist…)
Incidentally, copronyms (e.g. Kopreus, Kopron, Kopria, Koprolla) were quite common in Greco-Roman Egypt and were, according to one scholar, apotropaic. Just so you know.
Re: conjoint
Why would they ward off evil? Are we still using the same root of “copro” here? In which case I wonder if evil dislikes strong smells, or if it has something to do with dung beetles rolling the sun across the sky. Pray tell.
Excellent list, by the by. LOVE “crepitant” - I didn’t know that one before - and its associate in the dictionary, crepitate. Lovely onomatopoeic things.
copronyms for health and happiness
Supposedly copronyms were used to prevent deities from becoming jealous – as a way of saying ‘see, we don’t really like this kid, look what a horrible name we gave him/her; therefore you (oh deity, etc.) do not need to trot down from your cloud and blast and blight little Kopreus/Koprolla because look: with a name like that, he/she’s already blighted.’ People used to think copronyms indicated that the child had been found on a dung-heap (a common place for getting rid of unwanted children), but such, apparently, is not the case. Or so at least says S. Pomeroy (“Copronyms and the exposure of infants in Egypt” Atti xvii Congr. intern. pap. (1984)). Frankly, it’s not the sort of thing I’d argue about – but pompous papyrologists must argue about something...
Re: copronyms for health and happiness
Ah. The old reverse psychology. I always use that on gods, don’t you?