WONDROUS WORDS

What Is A Quockerwodger? Learn 10 Unused Words To Impress Your Friends!

Image: Andrew Seaman

The English language is vast and varied, the so-called universal language. And, like any other, it has undergone changes just as society has. In that process, many words and expressions are no longer accurate to represent our world and they fade away in use, leaving space for the new expression we coin.

It’s a pity so many amazing words have fallen out of use and gone into oblivion. But fear not, as we are here today with a list of ten words that we thought were worth bringing back! At least for you to read and have some fun!

Image: Afif Ramdhasuma

Let’s kick off the list with a word that describes something we all do, but don’t know it is called that. Imagine you’re on Instagram and you see that post from someone you don’t know but disagree with. Your first instinct is to comment in anger, although deep down, you know that’s pointless. You are, in short, brabbling.

"Brabble," which comes from the Dutch, means "to argue stubbornly about trifles". In its original language, it means "to quarrel or jabber," and its use was first noted in the 1400s.

Image: Alex Haney

Food is a source of happiness for most, who doesn't enjoy a plate of saucy pasta? Now, the enjoyment can quickly come to an end if you see someone groaking over you as you take the fork to your mouth!

The origins of this word are uncertain, but the meaning is superb: It means to silently stare at someone as they eat expecting to receive an invitation to join! Quite specific, isn’t it? And creepy if we might say so.

Image: Kinga Howard

When we think of the 1500s, we think of people getting up and right onto their chores, don’t we? This may be a surprise, but even back then, these people just wanted five more minutes in bed, and they had a word for it: slugabed.

Now, this term is compound and both aspects come from Middle English. On the one hand, "slug" means "lazy person". On the other, "bedd" is the old version of "bed."

Even phonetically, this word makes you want to stay horizontal, what do you think?

Image: Aleksandr Kadykov

This word sounds beautiful, but it may not be the case! Coming from the 1600s, "gorgonize" means to hypnotize or petrify, having a mesmerizing effect on someone, but not in a completely positive way.

The word comes from Ancient Greek and derives from the adjective gorgós which means "dreadful." If that word sounds familiar, that is because Gorgons was the name for the sisters with serpents on their heads, the ones who could petrify anyone who looked at them directly. We hope you’re not gorgonized by this word!

Image: Stephanie McCabe

This one has the vibes of an insult, or at least an adjective for when one is fed up with something, doesn’t it? Now, the context of "crapulent" is rather different: Can you imagine the feeling after you’ve had several courses in one meal or one too many drinks at a gathering? That’s when you feel crapulent.

The word can be traced back to the 1600s and it derives from a Greek word that means "hangover." If you take a close look at the word, you will notice that it captures its essence quite flawlessly!

Image: Lidia Nemiroff

This is a funny word with a literal and a metaphorical meaning behind it, and one that could easily adapt to today’s world!

Back in the 1500s, a "quockerwodger" was a wooden puppet with strings controlled by someone else. Can you see where the metaphorical meaning is going?

That’s right, the word also referred to someone, most times a politician, whose actions and thoughts were controlled or under the influence of other people.

Image: Joshua Hoehne

If one had to guess, "mickle" sounds like something small, but it is actually the opposite! The word "mickle" is synonymous with "big; large; a lot, etc." It refers to both size and quantity and it can be used in contexts like: "You are so nice, you must have a mickle of friends!" At the same time, it can be a standalone adjective like "a mickle storm."

It is both cute and versatile, so why don’t we bring it back?

Image: Javier Allegue Barros

Does this word sound familiar? That’s because the modern version of "betwixt" is "between," and this word is probably the oldest on this list, it can be traced back to 950!

Just like its modern version, "betwixt" has several meanings with a shared essence: "neither the one nor the other," to hold a middle position, to show options or indecisiveness.

This word is a true example of modernization of the language: Same meaning, different spelling and pronunciation.

Image: Uday Mittal

This word holds an interesting story for those intrigued by linguistic history. Rooted in witchcraft, it specifically described the old belief that witches would ride on brooms to cast hexes or inflict nightmares on unsuspecting victims.

Naturally, the meaning of the word derived and finally came to describe a personal torment and the reasons behind it. For example, "This project is really hagriding me!" This one is in for a reboot, the world today can get hagriding, don’t you think?

Image: Photoholgic

To close our article, we bring a word whose pronunciation does not do justice to its meaning. Picture this: It is a cold snowy winter day outside, but you can already see the sun, in all its glory, is coming out to warm your cheeks a bit. That is when you thank for the apricity of the day.

Dating from the 1600s, "apricity" refers to the warmth of the sun in the winter, and the definition alone can really paint a picture.

From submarines to video calls: 10 Jules Verne inventions that came true

Image: Albert Robida, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Before science fiction was even a thing, Jules Verne was already inventing the future in his novels. He filled his adventures with strange contraptions, daring machines, and ideas that seemed unlikely in the 19th century. The twist? So many of those daydreams turned into everyday reality. From submarines gliding beneath the seas to rockets racing skyward, Verne’s stories can be read less as fantasy and more as a premonition of what was to come. What follows are ten of his most remarkable visions, proof of how closely imagination can become reality.

Image: Victor Serban

In the 19th century, people regarded Verne’s stories as mere fantasy adventures. But flip through them today, and they feel like you are reading an early NASA mission report. In From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1869), the French writer imagines three daring men being shot into space from Florida, traveling inside a metal capsule. After a five-day trip to lunar orbit, the projectile lands safely in the ocean.

Although it was probably a crazy and far-fetched idea at the time, a century later, Apollo astronauts followed nearly the same playbook, proving that Verne’s "make-believe" wasn’t so impossible after all.

Image: Lena Koval

Jules Verne was probably one of the first to dream of machines fueled by water instead of coal or oil. In his vision, the humble liquid would be split into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing its hidden energy to drive engines of the future. For readers in the 19th century, this idea felt both magical and oddly precise, as if Verne had peeked into tomorrow’s laboratories. Today, hydrogen power is still experimental, yet it remains one of science’s most promising—and elusive—goals, holding the potential for clean energy on a grand scale.

Image: David Rodrigo

Rising from the earth like shimmering glass mountains, Jules Verne imagined ever-shining cities. He pictured towers of steel and glass that didn’t go dark at sunset but glowed brilliantly through the night, powered by the then-new magic of electricity. Inside, elevators would whisk people effortlessly upward, transforming the way cities could be built. Back then, most buildings barely climbed ten stories, and the idea of infinite skylines was almost otherworldly. Today, it’s exactly what we see through the window in any modern city.

Image: seth0s

Imagine reading about a ship that could submerge into the waves and roam the oceans like a sea creature long before such a thing was possible. That’s exactly what Jules Verne wrote about in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). His Nautilus was a 230-foot machine, armed with a library of 12,000 books and capable of sinking any ship.

Although Verne didn’t actually invent submarines, at the time of the book’s publication, they were no more than unreliable and primitive prototypes. If anything, Verne’s fictional vessel anticipated the technology of the submarines that now explore the oceans of the real world. His invention might have been a fantasy, but it was also a glimpse into the future.

Image: Maxim Hopman

Can you imagine having to hear the news secondhand in the town square? Jules Verne probably knew that, in the future, people would need to be informed at all times. So, he invented a daily news report delivered by voice—spoken bulletins that could be piped straight into homes and even announced at public kiosks. We can only imagine what this meant for his readers in the 19th century, but we can now easily relate to the news being available whenever we want. Long before antennas or TV screens, he foresaw a world where the latest headlines could arrive instantly, without a scrap of paper.

Image: Rebecca Johnsen

Many years ago, a machine flying through the sky as high as a cathedral with the ease of a bird would have seemed improbable. But Jules Verne’s imagination could go as far as he wanted. In Robur the Conqueror (1886), he introduces the "Albatross," a fantastic flying ship that can lift straight off the ground, hover in place, and maneuver with uncanny grace. Does this description sound familiar? That’s because Verne outlined the blueprint for the helicopter decades before engineers made it real in the 20th century.

Image: Windows

What seemed like a futuristic gadget in 1889 now feels like part of our everyday lives. In his novel In the Year 2889, Jules Verne describes the "phonotelephote," a device that allows people not only to communicate with others who are miles away but also to see each other’s faces in real time. For 19th-century readers, the idea was dazzling, almost too magical to believe. Yet today, we hardly think twice before tapping into a video call on our phones or computers. Verne essentially predicted FaceTime and Zoom calls a full century before the first computer was even connected to the internet.

Image: Or Hakim

Many decades before the first electric cars ever rolled off an assembly line, Jules Verne was already letting his imagination race ahead. In The Mysterious Island (1874), he described wagons that needed no horses, powered instead by rechargeable batteries. To 19th-century readers, the idea of a vehicle moving smoothly on its own was unthinkable, closer to magic than mechanics. Yet Verne’s vision sounds strikingly familiar to anyone who has seen a quiet electric car glide down the highway today. What was once a dream in the pages of a novel has become a daily sight in traffic.

Image: Geoff Maredi

Poetic yet technical—that was Jules Verne’s gift. Take his vision of music made not with violins or flutes, but with machines. In his once-shelved novel Paris in the Twentieth Century (written in 1863 but not published until the 1990s), the writer imagined concerts filled with sounds produced by electrical instruments. For 19th-century readers, it probably sounded absurd. Yet a hundred years later, synthesizers and electric keyboards defined popular music, proving Verne had once again tuned in early to the future.

Image: Tim Dennert

A ship that needs no fuel, gliding through space on nothing but light—it sounds like poetry. Yet Verne imagined exactly that. He described enormous sails stretched wide, catching not the wind but the faint pressure of sunlight itself and using it to push vessels across the vast silence of space. In his day, it was a dream almost too delicate to believe, like navigating the ocean with moonbeams. But the image stuck, and now scientists and space agencies are testing real solar sails, proving that his most poetic vision wasn’t just fantasy but a glimpse of tomorrow waiting to unfold in orbit.