canderflabble
n.— «I once read an article about useful foreign words that had no English counterpart, and it mentioned some language (I forget which) that had a noun meaning “the state of two people each waiting to see if the other will volunteer to address an unpleasant situation that has recently arisen and could be handled by either but which neither wants to do.” If the English word for that was canderflabble, I’d say that my wife and I spend a good portion of our nights engaged in canderflabble.» —“Roundtable: New Fathers, Round II” by Matthew Baldwin The Morning News Nov. 22, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
League of the Lexicon is a wide-ranging trivia game for language lovers with thousands of questions on all matters linguistic. Creator Joshua Blackburn has also compiled a treasure trove of linguistic delights in a companion volume called The...
Centuries ago, monks who took a vow of silence developed their own hand signs, with hundreds of gestures, that are still in use today. Plus, how do speakers of different languages distinguish similar shades and tints of colors such as red, yellow...