Thread for random words encountered while reading

mulct
dunderhead

I encounter mulct just the other day!

cotyledon
cirque

I'm amused that mulct can mean "swindle". Norwegian's "mulkt" only has the old Latin meaning of a fine or penalty.

callipygous

callipygous is a great word. Of a similar vintage, but a bit higher up the body, is "bustluscious"

knout

lambent
succor

These words seem pretty deliberately selected, guys.

Not sure how they could not be? I probably didn't understand the thread's concept; I just wrote the two words I'd looked up in the dictionary on the same evening. Luck had it that the source poems were available on google books.

Abbbottt is right. The word "random" in the thread title was used in a non-standard sense, based in recent slang, and therefore not universally understandable.

(hangs head in shame)

hey i want to defend this usage of random since there's a familial relation to random meaning "by chance" and you can easily use "at random" if you want to specify that meaning unambiguously.

Emolument, meaning compensation for services.
From The Pickwick Papers, chapter 7:
'When everybody had eaten as much as possible, the cloth was removed, bottles, glasses, and dessert were placed on the table; and the waiters withdrew to "clear away," or, in other words, to appropriate to their own private use and emolument whatever remnants of the eatables and drinkables they could contrive to lay their hands on.'

I found the etymology for this rather agreeable; apparently emolument is derived from emolere, to grind out. According to etymonline.com, it comes 'directly from L. emolumentum "profit, gain," perhaps originally "payment to a miller for grinding corn," from emolere "grind out," from ex- "out"'
This brings to mind 'molar', which comes from molaris dents, meaning grinding tooth. A well-chosen word, I'd say. I can see the fellows in the back room, chomping away on the leftovers.
Earlier today I read Saki's short story The Chaplet in which a chef is enraged when no one gives the "dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection which almost amounts to scandal" much attention. The diners are too busy listening to the orchestra do its eight rendition of 'The Chaplet', or rather mostly humming along and nodding at each other proudly for recognizing the song, leaving the food to go cold. Although a real scandal follows when the chef drowns the bandleader in a tureen of soup, I now imagine the waiters at least getting a decent meal. Hopefully they skipped the soup.

nostrum
keepsake

desultory
philippic

in what sense was random intended?

zoïle

you were reading Paul Simon song titles, don?

in what sense was random intended?

I expected this thread to become a repository of words that you read that struck you as interesting in part because of some peculiarity, for example their rarity in common discourse or some aesthetic quality they exhibit, such as a certain playfulness or creativity in design. Or maybe they just tickled your fancy.

that's what I thought, but "used in a slang sense...not universally understandable"?

Maybe I'll start telling people,"You're so random." Hey, sounds good!

gules
amphigory

I think St. Aubyn has used the word "fatuous" at least a couple of times, and while it's not new to me, I don't see it often and it's a great word

fatuous is awesome. Silly and smug!

poitrinaire

chthonic (must be pronounced like Sylvester the cat, btw)

prosopography

oh i assumed it was writing about faces (!) but a google shows my error.

descry

rides again

Ha.

Lodged in the slime they say: 'Once we were grim
And sullen in the sweet air above, that took
A further gladness from the play of sun;
Inside us, we bore acedia's dismal smoke.
We have this black mire now to be sullen in.'

Wiki mentions it as Sloth, to the degree it's one of the Seven Deadly Sins; also, from Merriam Webster:
Definition of ACEDIA
: apathy, boredom
Origin of ACEDIA
Late Latin, from Greek akēdeia, from a- + kēdos care, grief — more at hate
First Known Use: 1607
Next Word in the Dictionary: acediast

Maybe I'll start telling people,"You're so random." Hey, sounds good!

― dow, Thursday, March 15, 2012 8:54 PM (2 days ago)

people actually say this!

haha is dow old or british?

My favourite accidie/acedia moment.

And the minerals and creatures, so deeply in love with their lives
Their sin of accidie excludes all others,
Challenge the nervous students with a careless beauty,
Setting a single error
Against their countless faults.

cool. I'm old, not British, if there's really a difference. (I'll stop at nothing when cornered.) I knew it sounded good, so not so out of touch really, and so glad the youth are with it!

Some of the references to acedia that I've found make it seem more nuanced than sloth - it's something like "spiritual sloth," numbness or deflation in the face of what you know to be the highest good (worshiping God or whatever). You're conscious of what you ought to be doing, but that very consciousness inhibits your doing it.

Perhaps one way to think of acedia is as a much subtler formulation of the saying, "if you're not part of the solution, you are part of then problem."

From Richard Stark's _The Mourner_. Our man Parker's beaten up a couple of armed goons who were trying to sneak into his hotel room:

"Parker [...] straightened up and went away across the room to the nearest chair. He brought it over and sat down and kicked Wilcoxen conversationally in the ribs."

" 'Fuck you,' he explained."

Also from the lexicon of Richard Stark: vagged

seeing various meanings--which is Stark's?

Arrested as a vagrant; "on the vag." The Hunter was published in 1962, when, according to Wikipedia, vagrancy laws were broad and vague. I guess we lost these terms when the laws began to be considered unconstitutional.

reading clark ashton smith heavily lately; will make sure to note his strange word choices in this thread

"He heard the orotund and sepulchral croaking of the taverner."

"and sometimes there came a strange cachinnation, as if some adamantine image had laughed aloud"

"So, after long pondering, he repeated his request in a bold and haughty voice, like one who addresses an equal rather than the all-formidable suzerain to whom he had sworn a fatal fealty."