Olde Words
for Boring the Pants off Other Bores
Not everyone likes parties, especially those where the only person known is the host, while the rest are complete strangers. As the newbie, you are fair game for the resident bores, those tedious, self-centred twits that other guests avoid like the plague. Here is your salvation, a collection of words that have fallen into disuse. Woven into your conversation, they should define you as a bore par excellence, one to be vacated smartly and not revisited. And, once word gets around, if a further display of verbosity is perpetrated close to the refreshment table, you'll have the vol-au-vents and pink Champagne all to yourself for the duration.
Antediluvian: from a period before the great flood (Noah's Ark); old-fashioned or primitive.
Blue funk: a state of extreme fear. Example: standing on the cliff-edge, he was in a blue funk.
Bodacious: remarkable, outstanding.
Bounder: an ill-bred person, a vulgar upstart.
Brown study: deep, serious absorption in thought. Example: being in a brown study, she failed to notice.
Buffoon: one who amuses others by tricks, odd gestures and jokes; one given to coarse or undignified joking.
Cad: a contemptible, ill-bred person; a person who does not behave like a gentleman.
Caper: to leap or skip about in a sprightly manner.
Cock-a-hoop: a state of unrestrained joy or exultation.
Codswallop: rubbish or nonsense.
Contretemps: an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance.
Curmudgeon: a rude, miserly fellow easily provoked to anger.
Dally: to sport or play esp. amorously; to waste time, loiter, delay; to play (with danger). Also Dillydally.
Dilettante: one who pursues an art or science merely for amusement or personal pleasure.
Factotum: one employed to do all kinds of work for another; coll: a general dogs-body.
Filibuster: the use of obstructive tactics such as making prolonged speeches to delay legislative action; a freebooter, buccaneer, or an irregular military adventurer, esp. one aiding revolutionaries in a foreign country.
Folderol; also falderal: mere nonsense; a trifle.
Fop: a man who is excessively concerned about his manners and appearance.
Gewgaw: a bit of gaudy or useless finery; showy, but paltry.
High dudgeon: an extreme feeling of offence, resentment or anger.
Inveigle: to allure or win, sometimes to coax away by using charm or misleading, artful tactics.
Jackanapes: a mischievous person or child; a conceited dandy.
Lambaste: to beat severely; coll. to scold or berate.
Mawkish: sickly, or slightly nauseating; over-sentimental.
Mountebank: a seller of quack medicines in public places using trickery and storytelling; any charlatan or quack.
Parsimonious: frugal to excess, miserly, stingy.
Perspicacious: having keen mental perception; discerning; also perspicacity.
Poltroon: a wretched coward.
Purloin: to steal or take dishonestly.
Purple prose: flowery or pretentious phrases that the writer likes, but that can seem unnecessary.
Sartorial: pertaining to clothes or dress, generally men's. Example: sartorial splendour.
Scallywag: a scamp or rascal.
Shenanigan: nonsense, deceit, or a trick.
Skullduggery: dishonourable proceedings; mean dishonesty or trickery.
Turncoat: one who changes his party or principles; a renegade.
A few examples of impolite conversation:
So, you are a CEO in insurance, a grand, inflated title for a mere factotum.
Do you habitually filibuster, or is your codswallop reserved exclusively for social intercourse?
Three university degrees, eh? Did you acquire them for anything useful, or are you merely a dilettante?
This really isn't the place for a mountebank. Wouldn't you feel more at home on a street corner?
Designer label, you say. I find it rather antediluvian, sartorial over-kill really. Still, the gewgaws do add a touch of foppishness; and your simpering mawkishness is the icing on a particularly pretentious cake.
Or tell them a story like:
The Propitious Resignation of an Illustrious Senator
Jeremiah Catchpole, believing himself to be widely regarded as a bodacious orator of note, entered the chamber with signal flamboyance. Bedecked with gewgaws and adorned in his finest sartorial elegance, he strutted peacock-like between the rows to his seat, greeting fellow senators in his usual mawkish manner, imagining in his perspicacious ignorance that their amiable responses were indicative of a warm reception for his coming speech. Never parsimonious with words, Jeremiah began and the senate lapsed into a brown study. It knew him of old as an antediluvian dilettante, a mountebank who would filibuster for hours on end, spouting codswallop and folderols littered with purple prose in an attempt to inveigle the senate to pass legislation on some issue or other that he conveniently failed to mention. This time, however, he actually introduced a proposal for deliberation and subsequent implementation, it being a bronze statue of his remarkable self to be erected in the city square.
The house erupted in a state of high dudgeon, lambasting Jeremiah for being a self-indulgent cad. So incensed and wounded was he by the outburst that he clutched in a blue funk at his embroidered silken waistcoat and swooned to lay unmoving on the floor. The senate dallied but briefly with mouths agape, imagining this to be yet another shenanigan from an occasional turncoat not unknown for his skullduggery; but it seemed the fop had tendered his final resignation. Expelling loud sighs of relief at this fortuitous demise the senators, like a horde of jackanapes and buffoons, capered cock-a-hoop about the chamber, cheering in celebration. Jeremiah Catchpole would bore them no more; and as a gesture of appreciation, they voted to erect a monument in his honour - not a statue in the main square, but a public convenience secreted in a back-street constructed of brick and zinc-coated steel; because bronze was too expensive; and, they thought, far too pretentious.
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