Unusual Words About Words

Our ever-expanding Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms now contains over 1,300 words and phrases. Some of the terms are well known--subject, syntax, and simile, for example. Others--such as cacography and crot--are a bit more unusual.

But you probably won't find any that are quite as odd as the eight terms that follow. Though not all these words about words appear in our glossary (at least not yet), you can find them all in the second edition of the complete (20-volume) Oxford English Dictionary, popularly known as the OED. Granted, you may not have many opportunities to slip these terms into a conversation, but if you're a fellow logophile, you should definitely find them interesting.

1. battology
   Needless and tiresome repetition in speaking or writing.


2. cheville
   A meaningless or redundant word or phrase inserted to round off a sentence or complete a verse.


3. grammatolatry
   The worship of words or of writing. A grammatolator is a stickler for the forms of words.


4. idioglossia
   Invented speech, a private language. According to the OED, "a form of dyslalia [or speech impairment] in which the person affected consistently makes substitutions in his speech sounds to such an extent that he seems to speak a language of his own."


5. logodaedaly
   "Cunning in words," says the OED, or "skill in adorning a speech." However, the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines it less favorably as "the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words."


6. logomachy
   A disagreement about words and their meanings.


7. rumbelow
   A meaningless combination of syllables serving as a refrain, such as the sounds "yo ho ho" and "hey ho" of rowing sailors.


8. xenoglossia
   Speaking or writing in a known language that one has never studied or learned (at least not in any perceivably normal way).

More Words About Words:

• Weird, Witty, and Wonderful Language-Related Terms
• Twenty Rhetorical Terms That We Never Learned in School
• AP English Language and Composition Exam: 100 Key Terms