Martha and Grant share some favorite unusual words. Omphaloskepsis is a fancy term for “navel-gazing,” from the Greek omphalos, meaning “navel.” Mumbleteenth is a handy substitute when a number is too embarrassing to mention, as in, “Socrates the omphaloskeptic questioned himself for the mumbleteenth time.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Unusual Words”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, please don’t tell anybody, but recently I’ve been engaging in a lot of omphiloskepsis.
Oh.
Don’t tell anybody.
You’ve been doubting your own umbilical cord?
You know the term, omphiloskepsis. Yes, it comes from the Greek omphilos, which means belly button.
It’s related to umbilical and skepsis, inquiry, looking.
Omphalo skepsis, O-M-P-H-A-L-O-S-K-E-P-S-I-S.
Omphalo skepsis.
And it means what exactly?
It means navel gazing.
Oh, perfect.
Yeah, navel gazing.
Well, you know what?
I keep losing my keys for the mumble teeth time.
The mumble teeth?
That’s my new favorite word.
Yeah, mumble teeth.
Mumble teeth is when you don’t really want to tell people exactly how many times something has actually happened.
Oh, that’s nice. Mumble-teenth.
So you’re just like, mumble-teenth.
It’s just a kind of vague number.
I like that. It’s like pasta bazillion.
Yeah, pasta bazillion. Exactly.
Love that.
You know, we can find a lot of new words in our reading and our listening to radio.
What do you find? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
