Unlock the Forgotten English Words That Could Transform Your Vocabulary Today

WRITING WELL

I love discovering English words that are rarely used today. Just as scholars who research languages might promote saving those that are dying out, I think it’d be a noble cause to promote the use of rarely used English words to keep them from dying out as well. Especially fun ones. People might give you odd looks, but such are the risks of being a true word nerd. Consider the following:

The next time someone says something you agree with, instead of saying “Indeed,” try “Forsooth!” This impactful exclamation takes its meaning from the Old English word “sooth,” which means “truth” — and is still used today in “soothsayer.”

When you want to say that something was done “in secret,” say it was done “in hudder-mudder” instead, as in, “They planned the surprise party in complete hudder-mudder.” An easy way to remember this is that “hudder” came from the same source as “huddle” (“hoder,” which meant to cover something up).

A related “reduplicated compound” — “hugger-mugger” — was also used to refer to something secretive…or to indicate that something’s a total mess. You might use this handy term in place of one that includes a certain four-letter word, then, to describe something as “a total hugger-mugger.”

While the proper noun “Fiddle Faddle” might bring to mind a snack food introduced in the late 1960s (or, surprisingly, an edible curled fern also known as a fiddlehead), the hyphenated term/reduplicated compound “fiddle-faddle” has been around since the 1500s, when it referred to trivial talk or nonsense. So when you tire of someone’s incessant gossiping, you might retort with a terse “Desist with such fiddle-faddle!”

If interested in escalating your playful-insults game, consider these clever options from earlier times: If a friend is acting a fool, feel free to call them a “dizzard” or “mommet,” the latter of which also means puppet and scarecrow. If a friend has done something ill-advised, you might announce that they’ve been a “ninnyhammer” or demand that they “stop being such a jobbernowl!”