Chambers Dictionary
The tenth edition of the Chambers Dictionary of the English language was published in 2006 by Chambers Harrap.
Originally published in 1901 as Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary, the dictionary is widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players. It contains many more dialectal variants and archaic words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions, such as "a cake, long in shape but short in duration", for "éclair": it is assumed these were originally smuggled in by subversive lexicographers - they were at one stage dropped by the publisher (e.g. a "cake long in shape with cream and chocolate icing"), but later reinstated as something of a tourist attraction. The dictionary is widely known for its large number of more unconventional and often eccentric words.
Contents |
Humorous definitions
Piquant definitions from Chambers
- abloom adj in a blooming state
- Agapemone n a religious community of men and women whose ‘spiritual marriages’ were in some cases not strictly spiritual
- baby-sitter n one who mounts guard over a baby to relieve the usual attendant
- bachelor’s wife n an ideal woman with none of the shortcomings of married men’s wives
- back-seat driver n someone free of responsibility but full of advice
- bafflegab n the professional logorrhoea of many politicians, officials and salespeople, characterized by prolix abstract circumlocution and/or a profusion of abstruse technical terminology, used as a means of persuasion, pacification or obfuscation
- brains trust n a number of reputedly well-informed persons chosen to answer questions of general interest in public and without preparation
- buckwheat n a plant (Polygonum or Fagopyrum), its seed used esp in Europe for feeding horses, cattle and poultry, in America for making into cakes for the breakfast table, etc
- devil-dodger n someone who attends churches of various kinds, to be on the safe side
- fish vi to catch or try to catch or obtain fish, or anything that may be likened to a fish (such as seals, sponges, coral, compliments, information or husbands)
- flag-day n a day on which collectors solicit contributions to a charity in exchange for small flags as badges to secure immunity for the rest of the day
- Japanese cedar n a very tall Japanese conifer (Cryptomeria japonica) often dwarfed by Japanese gardeners
- jaywalker n a careless pedestrian whom motorists are expected to avoid running down
- lead out vt to conduct to execution or a dance
- middle-aged adj between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner
- not to mention to say nothing of, a parenthetical rhetorical pretence of refraining from saying all one might say (and is about to say)
- perpetrate vt to commit or execute (esp an offence, a poem, or a pun)
- picture restorer n one who cleans and restores and sometimes ruins old pictures
- Santa Claus n an improbable source of improbable benefits
- sea serpent n an enormous marine animal of serpent-like form frequently seen and described by credulous sailors, imaginative landsmen and common liars
- spatangoid n a heart urchin, a member of the Spatangoidea, an order of more or less heart-shaped sea urchins with eccentric anus
- table-turning n movements of tables (or other objects) attributed by spiritualists to the agency of spirits, and by the sceptical to collective involuntary muscular action
- waist-line n a line thought of as marking the waist, but not fixed by anatomy in women’s fashions
- xylophagan n one of the Xylophaga, a genus of boring bivalves
- yoof n (esp of magazines, TV or radio programmes, etc) relating to, specifically aimed at, pandering to, or dealing with topics (thought to be) of interest to modern youth
Some pleasing words as defined by Chambers
- batology n the study of brambles
- beblubbered adj disfigured by weeping
- callipygous adj having beautiful buttocks
- deipnosophist n a person who converses learnedly at dinner, a table-philosopher
- deliquesce vi to melt and become liquid by absorbing moisture
- discombobulate vt to disconcert, upset
- flimp vt to rob (someone) while a partner hustles
- genethliac adj relating to a birthday or to the casting of horoscopes
- goluptious adj delicious; voluptuous
- incompossible adj incapable of co-existing
- kakistocracy n government by the worst
- leiotrichy n straight-hairedness
- mulligrubs n pl colic; sulkiness
- obumbrate vt to overshadow (compare with adumbrate, also, eg., to overshadow)
- paneity n the state of being bread
- pilliwinks n pl an instrument of torture for crushing the fingers
- pinguitude n fatness
- Ralph n the imp of mischief in a printing house
- refulgent adj casting a flood of light; radiant; beaming
- roscid adj dewy
- rutilant adj shining; glowing ruddily
- scroddled adj (of pottery) made of clay scraps of different colours
- spoffish adj fussy, officious (archaic)
- squabash vt to crush, smash, defeat
- ultracrepidate vi to criticize beyond the sphere of one’s knowledge
Some words dropped since the 1901 edition
- dacryoma n a stoppage of the tear duct
- decacuminated adj having the top cut off
- derbend n a waysideTurkish guardhouse
- effodient adj habitually digging (zoology)
- essorant adj about to soar
- fiskery n friskiness (Carlyle)
- flipe vt to fold back, as a sleeve
- lectual adj confining to the bed
- neogamist n a person recently married
- nuciform adj nut-shaped
- numerotage n the numbering of yarns so as to denote their fineness
- pantogogue n a medicine once believed capable of purging away all morbid humours
- parageusia n a perverted sense of taste
- presultor n the leader of a dance
- ramollescence n softening, mollifying
- roytish adj wild, irregular
- sagesse n wisdom
- salebrous adj rough, rugged
- sammy vt to moisten skins with water
- sarn n a pavement (i.e., a sidewalk)
- scavilones n men’s drawers worn in the sixteenth century under the hose
- tarabooka n a drum-like instrument
- tortulous adj having swellings at regular intervals
- wappet n a yelping cur
- whinnock n the smallest pig in a litter a milk-pail (provincial)
- zythepsary n a brewery (obsolete)
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