20 August 2010

abderian



given to incessant, idiotic, or excessive laughter

I stumbled on a page of unusual words and have been having fun with them. Some are extremely fun to say, and are exactly what you might think they mean. Like "witzelsucht" from the *last entry.

Others are so obscure that I think, "wow, there had to have been a rash of behavior to call for its very own term." Like in the case of "abacinate", which means "to blind someone by placing a red~hot metal~plate near their eyes". Wiki even has an entry on this form of torture. Traditionally, the red~hot metal~plate was actually a heated copper basin. Not exactly the sort of thing I like to dwell on, and I have a feeling that the term is not used as much as the actual definition is.

{*witzelsucht=feeble attempt at humor}

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