Aug 28, 2009
We all have our own impossible-to-remember words. What are yours?
I always forget what verisimilitude means (hopefully not after this post, though).
What words have you looked up repeatedly, but can’t retain?
* * * * *
© 2012 Abuyo. All rights reserved.
I can’t remember.
I LOVE that, Noel! Have you ever had the experience of writing a word, and then suddenly thinking how STRANGE that word is? I’ve sometimes looked up a word, just to make sure it really exists…silly, I know!
Once I wrote the word “rhythm” and thought there was no way it could be right since there weren’t enough vowels.
Ahahaha. I was about to say, “If I have to keep looking it up, clearly I cannot remember it and therefore cannot tell you.”
No way! Two days ago I was thinking about asking this very question on my blog, but I honestly couldn’t remember enough troublesome words to make the list of my dreams. Anyway, “dogmatic” was vague in my mind for a long time, and I’d get confused between “affinity” and “aversion.”
Maybe it’s the dictionary’s fault.
Here’s what I found at Merriam-Webster:
1 : the quality or state of being verisimilar
2 : something verisimilar
If it weren’t for the etymology I STILL wouldn’t know what it means.
I’m nonplussed by nonplussed every time. Somehow I got it in my head that it should mean unaffected or unperturbed or something like that.
(And, yep, I looked it up before typing this, just to make sure I was remembering right.)
KP
totally same.
“Quasar” – Grade 9 astronomy… must’ve read the textbook a million times and I could never remember what a quasar was. Now I use the word ‘quasar’ for anything I could hear a million times and not remember (ie. “I don’t know… it’s a quasar to me!”).
i know that vermillion is a color. but i have no idea if it’s red or yellow. (well, i know it’s red right now, but i’ll have forgotten it by this time tomorrow)
oh…i totally thought it was yellow.
And I can never remember what color chartreuse is.
Ombudsman.
ontological
Factoid
Spendthrift
Supercillious.
Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any words. I DO, however, always have to look up the location of Uruguay.
chartruse
Make that chartreuse. Should have looked it up. :)
Watch Into Great Silence. You’ll remember.
Just thought about this very topic yesterday having come across “hendiadys” again and could only come up with the vaguest of definition.
Wow. Cool word. Don’t remember having ever encountered that one.
no matter how many times I look it up I can never remember how to spell definitely (thank you spell check!)
I never know whether to say that “I sympathize” or “I empathize”. I don’t think I’ll ever know the difference. So I just toss one out there and hope that the person will know that I really care about what they’re going through! :o)
Tractable
marotte.
I was eliminated from the National Spelling Bee on that word 16 years ago, and I still can’t get it together!
Prostrate and Prostate
have given me trouble for years.
Evidently our former pastor gets these two tangled too. “Lord, we come before you. We prostate ourselves before you…”
He confused the two in a public prayer, got noticeably rattled, but graciously recovered.
That should have helped me remember, but I still have to be intentional about usage.
There are others, but these stand out.
I think there are good reasons some of these words are difficult to remember. I vote with Noel – I can’t remember any….
I couldn’t remember one, until I hit: Draconian.
grace.
For the longest time, mine was ‘apposite.’ It’s relatively obscure now, but it comes up just frequently enough to keep me going back to my dictionaries due to the long periods between appearances, sorta like why we read our bibles. It means, in its adjectival form:
‘well put, or applied.’
opprobrium
puberphonia
spell check doesn’t even know this one
Lackadaisical. I always see it in college entrance exam reviewers, but I forget the meaning days after.
Neat question, this one. :D
i don’t know if this applies, but i always get urban and rural mixed up.