Obscure words and what they actually mean
Real words, real definitions — and a game built on inventing fake ones.
Most "rare words" lists are half invented. Words get copied between posts until something that was coined on a blog in 2013 is sitting next to a word with four centuries of use, and nothing tells you which is which.
These are the words the online game uses, and every definition on this page carries a source that was recorded during a written fact-check pass. Words with no solid dictionary attestation were cut rather than reworded — which is why this list is shorter than most.
Obscure words and what they mean
- Petrichor
- The smell of rain falling on dry earth
- Defenestration
- The act of throwing someone or something out of a window
- Borborygmus
- The rumbling noise made by gas moving through the intestines
- Sesquipedalian
- Given to using very long words
- Ultracrepidarian
- Someone who gives opinions on things they know nothing about
- Tsundoku
- Buying books and letting them pile up unread
- Snollygoster
- A shrewd, unprincipled person — especially a politician
- Callipygian
- Having beautifully shaped buttocks
- Gongoozler
- A person who idly watches boats on a canal
- Mondegreen
- A misheard lyric that makes its own kind of sense
- Zugzwang
- A position in chess where every possible move makes things worse
- Anagnorisis
- The moment a character makes a critical discovery about themselves
- Crepuscular
- Active at, or relating to, twilight
- Susurrus
- A soft whispering or rustling sound
- Widdershins
- In a direction contrary to the sun's course — anticlockwise
- Nychthemeron
- A full period of a day and a night — twenty-four hours
- Hiraeth
- A Welsh longing for a home you cannot return to
- Velleity
- A wish so faint that it prompts no action at all
- Limerence
- The state of being obsessively infatuated with someone
- Quidnunc
- A nosy person who always wants to know the latest gossip
- Absquatulate
- To leave abruptly and without ceremony
- Bibliopole
- A dealer in rare or second-hand books
- Cacoethes
- An irresistible urge to do something inadvisable
- Deipnosophist
- A person skilled in conversation at the dinner table
- Eucatastrophe
- A sudden turn of events that saves everything at the last moment
- Floccinaucinihilipilification
- The act of judging something to be completely worthless
- Hapax legomenon
- A word that appears only once in the whole of a text or language
- Interrobang
- The punctuation mark that combines a question mark and an exclamation mark
- Jentacular
- Relating to breakfast
- Kakorrhaphiophobia
- An abnormal fear of failure
- Lethologica
- The inability to remember a word you know perfectly well
- Matutinal
- Relating to, or happening in, the morning
- Noctambulist
- A sleepwalker
- Obelus
- The division sign, and the mark once used to flag a doubtful passage
- Paraprosdokian
- A sentence whose ending makes you rethink the beginning
- Rhinotillexis
- The picking of one's nose
- Sialoquent
- Spraying saliva while speaking
- Ulotrichous
- Having woolly or tightly curled hair
- Vagitus
- The cry of a newborn baby
- Wamble
- To feel queasy, or to roll about unsteadily
- Yclept
- Known by the name of; called
- Zoanthropy
- The delusion that one has become an animal
- Apricity
- The warmth of the sun in winter
- Brontide
- The low rumbling of distant thunder
- Pogonotrophy
- The cultivation of a beard
- Xenization
- Travelling as a stranger
Play Dictionary of Lies instead
Play Dictionary of Lies online — everyone writes a fake definition, and you have to spot the real one.