>Yes, but words are a means of communication. If someone simply invents a word...


I can understand your frustration.

But, firstly, these words (most of them at least) originate from the middle-ages, which was an extremely active time for the occult sciences. Even the queen (Elizabeth the I) had her own occultist for hexxing enemies and foretelling her future (Mr John Dee). They accordingly had a whole bunch of words for their activities, just like all our techy words today which would look just as unfathomable to a 15-century occultist and these do to you.

Secondly, I imagine some of these words are meant to be exclusionary; specialist vocabularies sometimes do have a way of trying to keep outsiders out.

Thirdly, is this really a place to have to defend obscure words? Isn't that one of the reasons people come here? To discuss words, and among them, obscure words? It's not like I threw these words into a sentence without explaining myself. I have posted them for discussion in a word forum because they are unusual. If the meaning of a word can be entirely taken for granted, there's not really a lot to discuss, is there?

Last edited by Person_Man; 03/06/06 08:44 PM.