Write-O-Ween Prompts: Unusual and Rare Words Edition
As practice for the famous NANOWRIMO, a prompts list of unusual and rare words! I’ll try writing them: will you?
Uncanny: strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way
Chimerical: merely imaginary; fanciful
Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound
Aubade: a song greeting the dawn
Ephemeral: lasting a very short time
Sempiternal: everlasting; eternal
Euphonious: pleasing; sweet in sound
Billet-doux: a love letter
Pluviophile: any organism that thrives in conditions of heavy rainfall; one who loves rain, a rain-lover
Redamancy: act of loving in return
Lachesism: the desire to be struck by disaster; to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire
Rubatosis: the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat
Nodus Tollens: the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore
Opia: the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable
Monachopsis: the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place
Énouement: the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self
Skulduggery: devious behavior
Tatterdemalion: raggedly dressed person; looking disreputable or decayed
Athazagoraphobia: the feeling of being forgotten, ignored, or replaced
Oblivion: the state of being completely forgotten or unknown; connotes feelings of isolation and aloofness, which lead to the annihilation or extinction of the self metaphorically
Abditory: a hiding, safe place to disappear
Hiraeth: the homesickness for a home you can never return to; a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past
Fernweh: the ache for distant places; the craving for travel
Sonder: the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own
Kenopsia: the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet
Kuebiko: a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence
Quiddity: the essence or inherent nature of a person or thing / an eccentricity; an odd feature / a trifle; a nicety or quibble
Wayfarer: a traveler, especially on foot
Nepenthe: a medicine for sorrow; a place, person or thing, which can aid in forgetting your pain and suffering
Gloaming: defined as twilight and dusk; the day’s end, the glittery, transient echo when time and nature meet
Eunoia: literally meaning “beautiful thinking” / FREE SPACE
