Jason English
19 Outstanding Words You Should Be Working Into Conversation
by Jason English - December 20, 2011 - 5:13 PM

There are some of our favorite words that appeared in mental_floss stories in 2011. Some are foreign words. Others come from medical dictionaries. And there’s a surprising amount of hobo slang. Have fun working these into conversation this holiday season!

Gene Lee / Shutterstock.com

1. Kummerspeck (German): Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

2. Paper-belly: A person unable to drink liquor straight, or one who grimaces after drinking.

3. Petrichor: The clean, pleasant smell that accompanies rain falling on dry ground. It’s from the Greek petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of Greek gods and goddesses). The term was coined by two Australian researchers in 1964.

4. milliHelen: The quantity of beauty required to launch just one ship.

5. Dysania: Having difficulty getting out of bed in the morning.

6. Karoshi (Japanese): Death from being overworked.

7. Lawn Mullet: A neatly manicured front yard and an unmowed mess in the back.

8. Koi No Yokan (Japanese): The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you will fall in love.

© Joe Giron/Corbis

9. The Wheaton: The delightfully geeky Wil Wheaton was one of the first celebs to attract a massive number of followers. When half a million people subscribed to his Tweets, that number was dubbed a Wheaton by John Kovalic. Today, Wil Wheaton actually has about 3.8 Wheatons.

10. Oldfangled: Old fashioned.

11. Bakku-shan (Japanese): The experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

12. Zeg (Georgian): The day after tomorrow. Why don’t we have a word for the day after tomorrow?

13. Crwth: An ancient Celtic musical instrument. Comes in handy when you’ve got no vowels in Words With Friends.

14. Punk Day: A day when children are admitted to a carnival or circus free.

15. Badinage: Playful, joking banter.

16. Pretzel-bender: 1. A peculiar person; an eccentric; one who thinks in a round-about manner. 2. A player of the French horn. 3. A wrestler. 4. A heavy drinker; one who frequents bars.

17. Glabella: The space between the eyebrows.

18. Tsktsks: Who knows? But it’s the longest vowel-free word you can play in Words With Friends (however, its play in WWF is only possible should you elect to use a blank tile as the second ‘K,’ since there is only one ‘K’ tile per game).

19. Gay-cat: A hobo not wise to the ways of hobo life; a hobo who is considered unacceptable by his fellows.

Thanks to Stacy Conradt, Adrienne Crezo, Bill DeMain, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Jamie Spatola, Ethan Trex and a reader named John.

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Comments (40)

  1. Tsktsks is probably a variant of Tsk-tsk. It’s the clucking sound that people make with their tongue, in disapproval.

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tsk-tsk

    posted by Patrick on 12-20-2011 at 5:28 pm

  2. Next time I’m running late in the morning, I’m going to tell my boss that I’m having a bout of dysania. That oughta confuse her.

    posted by M on 12-20-2011 at 5:43 pm

  3. In Urdu, the word for Tomorrow and Yesterday is the same: Kul

    They also have a word for the Day After Tomorrow and/or the Day Before Yesterday: Parsewn (n is nasal)

    The same word is used for both future/past reference, so you have you use context to figure out which day the speaker is referring to.

    It’s crazy.

    posted by Humaira on 12-20-2011 at 5:50 pm

  4. Glabella – I always preferred to call that a “browser.”

    posted by QT McWhiskers on 12-20-2011 at 6:10 pm

  5. Bakku-shan (Japanese): The experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

    What about a butterface? As in “That girl has a hot body, but her (butter) face is ugly.”

    posted by Meg on 12-20-2011 at 6:34 pm

  6. Petrichor can also be helpful if a malevolent alien planet thing is trapping you in your own TARDIS.

    posted by Abby Spice on 12-20-2011 at 8:02 pm

  7. Abby, petrichor is one of my favorite words, so imagine my delight when it was used more than once on Doctor Who! (That sentence sounds just as geeky as I am!)

    posted by Kerry on 12-20-2011 at 8:28 pm

  8. Crimson, eleven, delight, petrichor!

    “Petrichor, for the girl who’s tired of waiting.”

    posted by Brainlock on 12-20-2011 at 9:21 pm

  9. A friend of mine lives in japan…i used bakku-shan in conversation when he was home, he swears its not a japanese term.

    posted by CJ on 12-20-2011 at 9:41 pm

  10. I use the term
    Outtabednaphobia
    to cover my reluctance to get out of bed LOL

    posted by Kimmy on 12-20-2011 at 11:30 pm

  11. The milliHelen is an invention of Terry Pratchett’s. Seems a bit remiss not to credit him.

    posted by Amanda on 12-21-2011 at 5:47 am

  12. One of my favourite words is -
    Defenestration: the act of being thrown out of a window.

    posted by Stoko on 12-21-2011 at 5:57 am

  13. Your literal translation of Kummerspeck is wrong. Speck has multiple meanings in German, and bacon isn’t the one used here. The Speck in Kummerspeck is a synonym for Körperfett (body fat) or to be precise for Fettpolster (fat pad).

    posted by Jan on 12-21-2011 at 6:13 am

  14. in my language, the day after tomorrow = lusa.
    the day after that = tulat

    posted by sue on 12-21-2011 at 8:30 am

  15. Sorrow bacon or grief bacon is a pretty good translation.

    @13: There is also a word for it in German: Übermorgen (after-tomorrow and tomorrow is morgen).

    posted by Sebastian on 12-21-2011 at 8:32 am

  16. There is “saudade” in portuguese, which is the feeling you have when you miss someone

    posted by Eddy on 12-21-2011 at 11:41 am

  17. I suffer from dysania every Monday through Friday and my home is situated atop a lawn mullet.

    posted by Ryan on 12-21-2011 at 12:40 pm

  18. I believe the milliHelen predated Terry Pratchett’s use of it by a fair bit. Certainly I’d heard it a long time before Terry published that book.

    Perendination is the English word for putting off until the day after tomorrow, as procrastination is to put off to tomorrow …
    so some variant on “perendie” would be “the day after tomorrow”
    see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perendie

    http://wordsmith.org/words/perendinate.html

    posted by The Magician on 12-21-2011 at 1:02 pm

  19. My yarn is in a constant state of Lawn Mullet because the back yard grows twice as fast as the front yard. And all Doctor Who fans are already working Petrichor into every conversation they have. lol.

    posted by wren on 12-21-2011 at 1:03 pm

  20. 11. Bakku-shan (Japanese): The experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

    Is there a male equivalent?

    posted by ERF on 12-21-2011 at 2:11 pm

  21. I would caution against telling your boss you were late because you were suffering from Dysania. Just because she may think you really mispronounced diarrhea.

    After years of college I think I can finally admit I have a paper-belly.

    I also fit into the pretzel – bender category when talking about the first and fourth definition.

    posted by skoolie on 12-21-2011 at 2:15 pm

  22. in urdu “kal” is yesterday and tomorrow;
    “parsowwn” is day after tomorrow; but humaira missed out “tarsowwn” which is the day after,the day after tomorrow!

    posted by huma on 12-21-2011 at 3:02 pm

  23. I’m a pretzel-bender, I’m just not saying which definition I fall under.

    posted by rt on 12-21-2011 at 3:21 pm

  24. Another good word infrequently used is “osculation,” i.e. medical term for kissing.

    posted by Karl Hanel on 12-21-2011 at 4:12 pm

  25. How can I guy named Jason English have so many of these be non-english words ?

    posted by Deb McClanahan on 12-21-2011 at 6:07 pm

  26. I’m sorry. Number 3 is ‘sehora’ to me. I created it for my conlang before Dr Who had that word and dashed my dreams. It will always be sehora now.
    My blog: selmarea.blogspot.com has more if you like. :)

    posted by AliB on 12-21-2011 at 7:21 pm

  27. Hebrew has a word for the day after tomorrow: “machortayim” (literally, “double tomorrow”). FYI, we also have a word for the day before yesterday: “shilshom”.

    posted by MetFanMac on 12-22-2011 at 8:14 am

  28. the one word ‘millihelen’ brought back memories. i went to kansas state university back in the late 50′s and early 60′s.. four of us ate our evening meal in the student union cafeteria. of course we would oggle all of the fair lassies coming in . it became difficult to compare each others evaluation as to the beauty of the females. we therefore agreed that helen of troy was the most beautiful woman and one unit of measure would be a ‘millihen’ from then on no problem with comparisons.

    posted by john b. york on 12-22-2011 at 12:14 pm

  29. I definitely suffer from Dysania during the week :S

    posted by Rina on 12-26-2011 at 6:19 pm

  30. I memorized “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis” when I was young, and I actually managed to use it once, as an adult, in a conversation. The topic was ‘Poor choice of an excuse for taking a sick day at work.’

    Happy New Year!

    posted by Tdave on 12-31-2011 at 11:36 pm

  31. These designer words are totally lame and will not be used, ever.

    posted by Joe Cassara on 1-2-2012 at 8:12 pm

  32. In Afrikaans,

    Yesterday = gister
    The day before yesterday = eergister

    Tomorrow = môre
    The day after tomorrow = oormôre

    I’ve never bothered to look up the Afrikaans version of the Dennis Quaid movie, but I’m sure “Oormôre” isn’t as exciting of a movie title

    posted by PunKid on 1-3-2012 at 4:37 pm

  33. Backpfeifengesicht -German word meaning A face badly in need of a fist.

    posted by EMStoveken on 1-18-2012 at 9:58 pm

  34. Hi
    re Bakku-shan
    In German they used to say for that
    “Von hinten Lyzeum, von vorne Museum”
    It probably won’t rhyme nicely in any other language if translated
    It may go in American sth like
    Lyceum from the back
    Museum from the front
    Mind that Lyceum was a tern describing a girls only educational institution one typically left at the age of 18 to 19

    happy Easter

    GCR

    posted by Gerhard Charles Rump on 1-19-2012 at 5:40 pm

  35. We did have a word for the day after tomorrow: overmorrow. I definitely think we should bring it back. That and growlery.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/overmorrow

    posted by Danielle on 1-24-2012 at 10:10 am

  36. In Bulgarian we’ve got a word for the day after tomorrow as well as for the day before yesterday. I’ve always wondered why there are no such words in English, slightly inefficient that

    posted by Gabriela on 1-27-2012 at 5:37 pm

  37. “MilliHelen” is great! What about a term for a face that would sink a ship?

    posted by Bob Roberts on 1-31-2012 at 1:18 pm

  38. I am currently reading the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield and he uses the term “milli-Helens” quite a lot in the second book Pretties.

    posted by Erin on 2-1-2012 at 2:25 pm

  39. Obfuscate is one of my favorite words, but I can never find it on these lists…

    posted by BrianR on 2-8-2012 at 2:29 pm

  40. Japanese has words for the day before yesterday “ototoi” and the day after tomorrow “asatte.”

    But my favorite is “nomihoudai” which means “all you can drink.”

    They also two terms for all you can eat: “tabehoudai” or one they took from outside their language “baiking.”My friend was a little disappointed when the the buffet we wet to was not a Viking themed restaurant.

    posted by monkey boy on 2-12-2012 at 7:11 pm

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