I love the floribund nature of the English language. Why use two or three words when there is a bloom to be plucked for just that opportunity. Therefore I was delighted to stumble across another list of unusual verbiage last week.

I knew quite a few of them and had some minor disagreements with others (aglet? any enclosure at the end of a shoelace I think, not just a metal one) but there were some delightful additions to my vocabulary too. One of my favourites and the one I’ve had a chance to drop into conversation so far is griffonage, handwriting so bad as to be almost illegible.

Pick a favourite from the list, new or old, and see if you can work it into conversation today.