Definition: one who is presumptuous and offers advice or opinions beyond one’s sphere of knowledge.

The meaning of this word comes from a story in antiquity, in which the famed Greek painter Apelles one day heard a cobbler criticizing the way he had rendered a foot in a pai...

Definition: one given to finding out and getting invited to good feasts.

The smell-feast is a distinctive kind of sponger; not one who imposes on friends for lodging and money, but rather focuses their efforts on being invited to dinner. We have all of us known a smell-feas...

Definition: a contemptible unmannerly person.

English is a language that contains an embarrassment of riches when one wants to say something mean about someone else. If you need to refer to a contemptible...

Definition: an affectedly nice person, a fop.

Prickmedainty, a word that has primarily been used in Northern England and Scot...

Definition: one who insincerely professes love for the sake of gain.

This delightful term is fashioned from the earlier noun cupboard love. This Kind of Love is frequently seen among certain Gentlemen at Counry Quarters, the Curates in City Parishes, Attornies Clerks, and y...

Definition: a ponderous clumsy person.

Fustilugs is one of those words that do a certain amount to renew one’s faith in the notion that English language makes sense.

• It is an obscure word that man...

Definition: a worthless person or thing; one who cumbers the world.

Some words are examples of their definition; sesquipedalian, a word which means “having many syllables” may be used to describe itself. It is unclear why such a useful word for describing useless things sho...

Definition: a silly flighty person.

Flibbertigibbet is one of many incarnations of the Middle English word flepergebet, meaning "gossip" or "chatterer." (Others include "flybbergybe," "flibber de' Jibb," and "flipperty-gibbet.")

It is a word of onomatopoeic origin, c...

Definition: one who excessively strives for knowledge, or has a preoccupation with it.

A person who loves knowledge is a thing of beauty. However, a person who loves knowledge just a bit too much can quickly transition from “thing of beauty” to “person you’d really rather n...

Definition: a religious fanatic.

Berndt Knipperdolling was a prominent Anabaptist (a member of a sect of 16th century Protestants who advocated the baptism and church membership of adult believers only), born in Munich at the end of the 15th century.

Knipperdolling’s...