VOCABULARY PRACTISE - WORDS FOR ALMOST EVERYTHING

If you are always biting your fingernails it is called onychophagy. Talking of fingers: the end of your middle finger is called the dactylion. There is a word to describe the state of being a woman: muliebrity. And there is a word for that moment when you completely forget what you were thinking of: aposiopesis. If you have the urge to look through the windows of homes as you walk pass them, then you suffer from crytoscopophilia. The feeling of falling you get just as you fall asleep is called a myoclonic jerk. As you can see, in English, there is a word for almost everything.

There are many unusual words in English, yet, strange as it may seem, English has no word to show the opposite to warmth: type coolth and your spellchecker will put a red line under it. We have hard and soft, near and far, big and little, but no words to describe the middle position. What do you call something that is neither hard nor soft, neither near nor far, neither big nor little? I offer sard, nafar and littig.

After you come back from your holidays you have a backlog of work waiting for you. But, if you are like me and have a lot of work to do before you go away for your two weeks in the sun do you have a forelog?

You can’t, there is no such word.