“D” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

Creative Writing, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Society & Culture

<word definition and root formation>

Dactylonomy: counting on the fingers [Gk. dactylo- (“finger”) +‎ -nomy (“law”; “custom”)]

Dactylonomy (source: csaimages.com)

Dasypyal: having hairy buttocks [Gk. dasús, (“hairy”; “dense”) + –pugḗ, (“buttocks”)]

Dasypyal (source: istockphotos.com)

Delendum: (Pl. -da) thing to be deleted [from dēlinō, (“destroyed”; “annihilated”; “razed”)]

Desipient: silly, trifling or foolish [L. de- (“of”; “from”) + sapere (“to be wise”)]

Desuetude: state of disuse [L. de +- suescere (“to become accustomed”)]

Deuteropathy: (Medic.) secondary illness [Gk. deúteros, “second” + -pathy -páthos, (“suffering”) +‎ y]

Diasyrm: rhetorical device of damning by faint praise, a method of ridiculing or disparaging someone [Gk. (?)]

Dicacity: oral playfulness; talkativeness [From Ldicacitas, from dĭcāx (“sarcastic”; “witty”) + -ity]

Didapper: one who disappears and then bobs up again [from a merging of “dive” and “dapper”]

Didapper: disappearance and reappearance, the magician’s trick of the trade (source: clker.com)

Dilogy: ambiguous or equivocal speech or discourse; repetition of a word or phrase [Gk. dilogía (“repetition”), from dís, (“twice”) + -logia]

Dippoldism: (Psych.) the paraphilia of deriving pleasure from the implementation of any form of corporal punishment whether it be in the form of beating, whipping, or spanking of another; sexuoerotic arousal derived fron spanking or whipping school children [From Andreas Dippold, German schoolteacher convicted of inflicting abuse on children including manslaughter]

Dismissory: sending away; permit to depart [from L. dimittere (“send away”) (dismiss) + -ory]

Discalceate: barefooted [dis + from L. calceus (“a shoe”)] 👣

Diversivolent: desiring different things [L. diversi (“diverse”) + –volent-, volens, velle (“to will”; “wish”)]

Dolorifuge: that which drives away sadness, mitigates or removes grief [from L. dolere (“to grieve”) + –fugere (“flee”). Coinage modelled on centrifuge, febrifugevermifuge, etc.]

Drapetomaniac: a person with an impulse or intense desire to run away from home [Gk. drapetēs, “a runaway [slave]”) + -mania, “madness”; “frenzy”). Coinage: Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright invented the term “Drapetomania” in 1851 to describe what he believed was the “psychological disorder”(sic) that caused a phenomenon of enslaved Blacks to run away from bondage before the American Civil War (masshist.org)

Drapetomania: an 1837 engraving of an escaped slave in the US

Dyslogy: censure; dispraise; uncomplimentary remarks [modelled on eulogy, Gk. dys (“badly”) + -logy]

3 thoughts on ““D” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

  1. When I first came across the word diglot, I conjured up some kind of learned helot. But It’s actual dictionary meaning via the OED is a bilingual person or publication – as underlined in its Ancient Greek origins: díglōttos, di- “twice, double” and -glōttos, a derivative of glôssa “tongue.”
    My second entry for D is the politically loaded dextroversion = turning to the right.

  2. Diaphanous: (esp of a fabric) light, delicate and translucent. Greek root: dia (“through”) + -phainein (“to show”)

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