We Love Our Weird Words

Many authors find it easy to become overwhelmed, to feel as if they’re behind in their goals. The words just don’t come. Or, if and when they do, they are clunky and pathetic.

This feeling of heaviness can slow us up even further — so much so that we can forget why we do what we do. We forget all of the wonderful stories we have to tell and the amazing “characters” we’ve met — people whose stories are itching to be shared.

We forget there are readers “out there, somewhere” waiting for that next release. We forget that political- or pandemic-related heaviness will eventually pass as well.

Sometimes we even forget the love of words that launched us as readers and, probably not long after, as writers.

In an effort to lighten the mood and to celebrate those wonderful building blocks that allow us to do what we do, Amelia Indie Authors started to celebrate Word Nerd Wednesdays. Members of our team create delightful graphics in celebration of some of the quirky words we love and would like to get to know better. The posts are light and social and (we hope) lots of fun.

#WordNerdWednesday

Funny, as I think about our collection of weird words, I’m reminded of the usual Monday night homework in elementary school days. You might have had the same assignment. On Mondays we would receive a list of new spelling words. After copying them down from the chalkboard, our homework was to look up each of them in the grown-up dictionary and write the definition beside each word.

I don’t know about you but this almost always turned into a very long assignment for me. Each page was a source of adventure as I got distracted by the tastiness of all of those amazing ideas. They were magnetic.

#WeirdWordWednesday

The Amelia Indie Authors are not the only ones with such a fascination. Some authors are intrigued enough to create entire books on the topic. Favorite Husband and I are currently on a lengthy road trip, so my personal collection is in storage. I looked around Amazon for exact titles and publishing info, and, of course, I turned up a few new ones. (So far I’ve managed not to buy any new ones. So far.) Perhaps one of these will speak to you.

• Rare Words and Ways to Master Their Meanings: 500 Arcane but Useful Words for Language Lovers

• Endangered Words: A Collection of Rare Gems for Word Lovers 

• The Little Book of Lost Words: Collywobbles, Snollygosters, and 86 Other Surprisingly Useful Terms Worth Resurrecting

• The Illustrated Compendium of Weirdly Specific Words: Including Bumbledom, Jumentous, Spaghettification, and More

If you’re on social media, you can find our Word Nerd Wednesday offerings on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. When you run across them, please take a moment to “like” or comment. If you find a particular favorite, go ahead and share it. Believe it or not, that’s a wonderful way to attract people to our work.

We also invite you to use the comments section of any of these posts to suggest new words for consideration. In fact, if you have any favorite “weird words” you’d like us to add to the queue, please add them below.