Cackemander

Heterological nouns are nouns that sort of don’t sound like what they are.

Heterological meaning other word or other symbol.

Yeah, yeah. So here’s one that I don’t know if it counts, but the word is cacermander.

Do you know this term?

No, but it reminds me of kind of slaky dialect terms for being left-handed, cack-handed.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, or cackermander, like related to a salamander.

But it’s actually a term in England, a dialectal term that means friend.

And I just, you know, hey, cackermander, it doesn’t work for me.

No, is this archaic, obsolete?

I can’t imagine this is being used in greetings in parliament to MPs at the start of the day.

I think probably it’s one of those terms that’s fading out or has faded out.

But you can find it in dialect dictionaries, and it just sort of makes me stop and think.

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