June 1: Steven Poole has excelled with his words over the past week or so, delighting me with gems like cognosible, hippotherapy, and smellfeast. But I’m especially taken by today’s word, alazony, which means the “inability to recognize irony when they see it.” Alazony is one of Poole’s more modern rare words and it sounds great, doesn’t it? Let’s hope no-one ever casts the aspersion of alazony upon me.
Garry Disher, that renowned Australian author, donated a wondrous word to me: floordrobe. It means the pile of clothes on your bedroom floor in place of actual furniture. I won’t name those I know who once built substantive floordrobes.
Source: A Word for Every Day of the Year by Steven Poole.