Awkward words ahead

Did you fartlek today? 12 words that sound funny but are serious

We all know it: some words just sound ridiculous, but they mean business. If you have ever come across a term like "gobbledygook" or "kerfuffle" and wondered if someone made it up, you're not alone. Let us take a look at 12 of these magnificent words that seem unreal, but are not.

It does remind us of a dirty word, but it’s not. A firkin is, in fact, an ancient English word that refers to a small tub or a vessel of sorts.

Traditionally, it held ale or butter, sized at about a quarter of a barrel, making it handy for transport. Breweries still sometimes use firkins today for cask-conditioned beers, keeping the word alive in pub culture.

Many terms that today sound funny or even rude are, in fact, outdated words and idioms that fell out of use. Godwottery is one of these, and it can be used to describe overly decorated or elaborate speeches.

The word comes from the name of English poet George Gascoigne’s fictional gardener, "Godwot," linked to the overly ornate style of gardening. By extension, it entered English in the 19th century to label pretentious language.

What sounds like a teenager's expression of approval is, in fact, an 18th-century word for cash. It often appeared in casual speech and newspapers to mean ready funds.

Though it has fallen out of everyday use, it still pops up in literature or nostalgic writing to add a colorful touch to talk about money.

Fartlek may sound like a joke, but it’s a serious workout technique. It comes from Swedish and means "speed play."

This type of endurance training involves alternating between jogging and sprinting. Despite the silly name, it’s used by athletes to improve speed and stamina.

Popple means choppy or rough seas, and, in an onomatopoeic sense, it sounds just like what it describes.

Its origin lies in Middle English, linked to the verb popelen, meaning to bubble or boil. And, though it is less common in modern English, it does survive in regional usage and poetry, evoking the lively surface of wind-stirred water.

Impignorate is a fancy old word that means to pawn or mortgage an item. It’s rarely used today, but it once described the act of offering something valuable as a loan guarantee.

The term comes from the Latin impignorare, formed from in- plus pignus, meaning pledge. First recorded in the 16th century, it was used in legal and financial contexts.

Any word that starts with "butt" is prone to appear on this list. In this case, a buttress is a support structure that helps keep walls or buildings stable.

You’ll often spot them on Gothic-style churches, castles, and cathedrals, adding both strength and style.

While it sounds like a tricky tongue twister, and it definitely could be one, "biblioklept" is in fact the word for someone who steals books.

The word comes from the Greek roots biblio- meaning "book" and kleptes meaning "thief." It appeared in English in the 19th century, reflecting a period when Greek and Latin roots were often combined to coin precise or scholarly terms.

If the term spleenwort sounds more like a medical problem than a plant to you, you are not alone. Does it refer to something or someone worthy of spleen?

In fact, the word spleenwort is the name of a small evergreen fern found in rocky areas and forests.

Never heard of penuche? If you’re not a baker, that’s pretty normal. A penuche is a type of fudge made with brown sugar, buttercream, and usually some nuts.

It’s a traditional sweet found in New England and parts of the American South, where it remains a nostalgic treat. It sounds more sophisticated than it is!

Again, it’s not an old-fashioned insult. Slumgullion is a strange-sounding word for a simple, cheap meat stew. It’s one of those food terms that doesn’t exactly make your mouth water, despite its hearty roots.

It was common among miners, loggers, and working folks who needed filling meals with whatever was on hand. It might not look or sound great, but it definitely gets the job done!

A shalloon might sound like the word saloon, pronounced by someone with a speech impediment. But it’s not. Shalloon is a lightweight, twilled wool fabric once used in clothing and linings. Unless you're into textiles or fashion history, you’ve probably never needed the word.

The word comes from Châlons-sur-Marne in France, where the fabric was originally produced. The English form "shalloon" emerged in the 1600s, reflecting the common practice of naming textiles after their place of origin.

Names matter

These body parts have a proper name that most people don’t know about

Would you be able to confidently point at your pinna if asked? Or could you say how many canthi a person has? Each part of our body has a specific name—sometimes more than one—but we don’t always use them or even know them, especially if a popular version exists. The big toe, the bit of flesh between the index and the thumb, the space between the brows, all these have a proper name that is rarely used. Let’s discover the proper way to refer to some parts of our body.

We typically refer to the space beneath the shoulder as the armpit or underarm, but the technical name for it is axilla. The name comes from a diminutive form of the Latin ala, meaning ‘wing’ or ‘upper arm’, which would make the armpit the ‘little wing’.

This ‘little wing’ serves as a passageway for important nerves, blood vessels, and lymph nodes that supply our upper arm, making it a vulnerable spot but also very sensitive and ticklish, as our body instinctively tries to protect the area.

There is a reason why we call the top of the upper lip the "Cupid’s bow". The philtrum, or the vertical groove that goes from the button of the nose to the lip, is named after the Greek word phíltron, meaning ‘love spell or charm’.

This area was once considered to possess a special beauty, and the philtrum was the path where Cupid's love arrows would land. Anatomically, its role in humans is debated; while some researchers consider it a leftover from our evolutionary past with little remaining function, others have proposed it may still play minor roles, such as in upper lip mobility. In other mammals, it's more clearly tied to the sense of smell, helping direct scent molecules toward specialized olfactory organs.

How do you refer to the space between your eyebrows? While most of us say "the space between the eyebrows", the correct name is glabella, a Latin word meaning ‘smooth’ or ‘hairless’.

The origin of the name is quite straightforward: while many mammals have "eyebrows", their brow bones are protruding and are often completely covered in fur. In humans, the brow bone is flat and smooth, and the area between the brows is typically hairless.

No one really knows how the bit of skin between the thumb and the index finger came to be called purlicue. Some say that it is a combination of the Scots pirlie (‘curl’) and the French cue (‘tail’)

This term was first used for squiggly writing or for the decorative flourish at the end of a word, but etymologists still can’t explain how it came to be used for the curve of the hand.

The term ‘ear’ encompasses both the outer and inner parts of the ear, but each component has its own name. Pinna, meaning ‘wing’, is the proper name of the visible ear, sometimes also called auricle, including both the cartilaginous and the fleshy part.

Although the inner ear is mainly responsible for converting sound into electrical signals and sending them to our brain, the pinna acts like a funnel that amplifies the sound vibrations and directs them into the ear canal.

We have specific names for every finger, but what about the toes? The names for the toes mirror those of the fingers (index, middle, ring, pinky), except the big toe, which is called the hallux, after the Medieval Latin hallex, meaning ‘great toe’.

However, this scientific name still has a connection with the thumb, as linguists believe that the spelling of hallux was influenced by the Latin word pollex, meaning ‘thumb’.

Several parts of the human body have a frenum (or frenulum), or a small band of tissue that restricts a mobile organ, such as the one connecting the underside of the tongue with the mouth.

This name comes from the Latin frenum, meaning ‘rein’ or ‘bridle’, equating the way tissue anchors and restricts the movement of the organ to how a rein directs and controls an animal.

If you thought that the corners of our eyes didn’t have a proper name, you are in for a surprise. The spot where the upper and lower lids meet —both inner and outer— is called canthus (canthi in plural), after the Greek kanthós, meaning ‘angle’ or ‘corner’.

Over the inner canthus, some people have a skin fold, called epicanthus (‘above the canthus’) or epicanthic fold. The shape of this fold —influenced by genetics, age, or medical conditions— often results in the upper lid being partially or completely hidden when the eye is open.

We often call it the cheekbone, but the proper name for it is zygoma, meaning ‘yoke’ or ‘bolt’ in Greek. Why was this name chosen? This bone acts like a bridge or yoke that connects the facial bones with the skull.

The scientific name for this bone is quite old, dating back to the 2nd century and to famous physicians such as Galen, who were the first to compare the cheekbone with a yoke. However, the term entered the English language only in the late 17th century.

Our nose has two nares or nostrils, separated by a strip of skin. Have you ever wondered if that small piece had a name? Well, it does, and it’s called columella, a diminutive form of the Latin columna (‘column’ or ‘pillar '), reflecting how the strip of nasal tissue stands like a column between the nostrils.

This word entered English in the 16th century, but it wasn’t only used to describe the human nose. Instead, it was adopted by many scientific fields to describe different structures that resembled a column.

Is there a clear distinction between the chin and the point of the chin? We often call the point of the chin just ‘chin’, but it's actually called the gnathion, derived from the Greek gnathos (‘jaw’ or ‘mouth’).

Gnathion is the diminutive form of gnathos, and could be translated as ‘little chin’. While anatomically, ‘chin’ describes the entire forward part of the lower jaw, the term gnathion refers to the pointiest part of it.