mumpsimus
n. a view stubbornly held even when shown to be wrong

Euphemisms for vomiting:

• Un-eating
• Number three
• Vector-spewing
• Launching lunch
• Jackson Pollock
• Eating backwards
• Parking the tiger
• Making a crustless pizza
• Bringing it up for a vote
• Cooking up a pavement pizza
• Driving the Buick to Europe
• Alan’s psychedelic breakfast
• Yawning for the hearing impaired
• Yodelling to the porcelain megaphone
• Talking to God on the big white telephone
• Paying homage to the Irishman Huey O’Rourke
• Calling Huey (or Ralph) on the commode-a-phone

Also: horking, yakking, yarfing, yorxing. “Grasp the subject,” wrote Cato, “the words will follow.”

snobographer
n. one who describes or writes about snobs

The Anagrammy Awards is a monthly anagram competition. March winners:

• THE CRIME INVESTIGATOR = HE INTERROGATES VICTIM
• A TRAINED SUSHI CHEF = HE’S A TUNA-FISH DICER
• ASTEROID THREATS = DISASTER TO EARTH

My favorite from the hall of fame — this:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THAT IS THE QUESTION; WHETHER ‘TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

can be rearranged to spell

IN ONE OF THE BARD’S BEST-THOUGHT-OF TRAGEDIES, OUR INSISTENT HERO, HAMLET, QUERIES ON TWO FRONTS ABOUT HOW LIFE TURNS ROTTEN.

Can’t beat that.

uglyography
n. bad handwriting; poor spelling

opiniaster
n. one who obstinately holds to an opinion

afterwit
n. knowledge gained too late to do any good

Autological words describe themselves:

• pentasyllabic
• seventeen-lettered
• descriptive
• uninformative
• English
• pronounceable
• confusionful
• wee

Heterological words don’t:

• abbreviated
• adverb
• purple
• carcinogenic
• plural
• phonetic
• misspelled

So is heterological a heterological word?

jentacular
adj. pertaining to breakfast

A kadigan is a placeholder for an unspecified word. You know: blivet, deelie-bob, device, dingus, doodad, doohickey, doofunny, doover, fnord, gadget, geemie, gizmo, hoochamajigger, kerjigger, oojah, oojamaflip, thingamajig, thingamabob, thingamadoodle, thingo, thingum, thingummy, thingy, thing-thing, whatchamacallit, whatchamajigger, whatsit, whosey, whoseywhatsit, whosis, widget, whatsitsname.

These are common words that do useful work, but they have no formal part of speech, falling somewhere between nouns and pronouns. “Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly,” wrote William Penn, “for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.”