We go inside the diary of a word nerd

After a suitcase of documents and my laptop, the possession I would save third in a fire is a battered black book.

It lives at the bottom of an old shoe box in my cupboard. Inside is a gallimaufry of words just the way I like them — long, old and tasty.

They include archaic treasures gathered over the years from Charles Dickens, CS Lewis and other authors, as well as many gleaned from websites like Vocabulary.com.

• ‘Vellichor’ and other wonderful English words
• Forty strange facts about the English language
• Could the five cent coin be on its last legs

Happily, I concede we cannot halt the march of language. I watch with interest as ’emoji’, ‘selfie’ and ‘belfie’ pervade modern English, and would never frown at the use of a smiley face.

But I wouldn’t rescue a page full of hashtags from a slight breeze.

On Thursday, the Oxford University Press declared ‘hashtag’ to be the children’s word of the year, based on thousands of short stories submitted to a BBC competition.

“Children have extended its use from a simple prefix or as a search term for Twitter to an editorial device to add drama or comment,” Oxford University Press spokesman Vineeta Gupta said in a statement.

I’m okay with that. I swear. Honestly. #notevensad

But forgive me if every now and then I dig out my little back word journal, bury my weary head inside and reminisce.

Here are some of my favourites:

	Absquatulate	To leave abruptly.
	Abstemious	Practicing moderation.
	Agon	A conflict, especially between a protagonist and antagonist in a work of literature.
	Algedonic	Both pleasurable and painful.
	Blandiloquence	Flattery.
	Cachinnator	A person who laughs too often or too loudly.
	Congeries	A jumbled collection.
	Consenescence	Growing old.
	Contretemps	An accident
	Diaphanous	Flimsy.
	Doughty	Brave.
	Eidetiker	A person with a photographic memory.
	Eleemosynary	Charitable.
	Epizeuxis	Repeating a word or phrase for emphasis (‘Nope, nope, nope’).
	Farrago	A confused mix.
	Froideur	Antipathy or hostility.
	Fuliginous	Sooty.
	Gallimaufry	A confused medley of things.
	Insouciance	A casual lack of concern.
	Interregnum	A pause.
	Invidious	Likely to arouse resentment.
	Kenosis	To completely humble oneself (literally, renounce divinity).
	Lacuna	A gap.
	Mythomaniac	A compulsive liar.
	Natation	Swimming.
	Noetic	Intellectual.
	Ophidian	Snakelike.
	Pellucid	Easy to understand.
	Perambulate	To walk leisurely for fun.
	Persiflage	Light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter.
	Queeg-thing	Signaller of strange behaviour.
	Sedulous	Hard-working.
	Tergiversate	To change one’s loyalties or beliefs.
	Truculent	Quick to argue.