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Here is our top list of uncommon words you can add to your writing. Most writers avoid using uncommon words to avoid confusing readers. However, unfamiliar words make pieces unique and interesting. Get acquainted with uncommon words and how you can incorporate them into sentences via this guide. It pairs nicely with our list of mood words for literature . What Are Uncommon Words? Although uncommon
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Uncommon words earn their place when they name something no common word quite catches: sonder, metanoia, and serendipity all do work that plainer vocabulary cannot. This bank gathers rare nouns, adjectives, and verbs alongside genuine oddities from the far corners of the dictionary. Deploy them one at a time, in sentences plain enough that context teaches the meaning.
Rare naming words, several of them for things you did not know had names. These are the safest uncommon words to use because a noun's context usually explains it.
Describing words with unusual precision or music. Each one carries a shade of meaning its common cousins miss.
Action words from the dictionary's back rooms. Many are inherently comic, which makes them useful for tone as well as meaning.
Words that survive from older English or name strangely specific things. They are conversation pieces as much as working vocabulary.
Sparklines show each word's usage in published books since 1800 (Google Books Ngram data). The dot marks the peak decade.
Tap any word to see it used in a sentence.
The new manager proved a complete agelast, sitting stone-faced through the office pantomime.
The reading room remains a bastion of enforced silence.
Some biblioklept has made off with both copies of the atlas again.
Medieval peasants dreamed of Cockaigne, where roast geese wandered past begging to be eaten.
Parking near the stadium on match day is a genuine conundrum.
The estate agent's brochure strained everyone's credulity.
The insurance renewal arrived as twelve pages of gobbledygook.
A rainy bank holiday provided the impetus to finally clear the attic.
Her favorite interlocutors are the two retired teachers at the allotment.
His Kakorrhaphiophobia kept the finished manuscript in a drawer for a decade.
Shipping magnates once kept summer houses along this stretch of coast.
A meldrop trembled at the end of the old dog's nose through the whole cold walk.
The rock pool held a myriad of small, indignant crabs.
The ferry's diesel fumes acted as a reliable nauseant in rough weather.
Only a nincompoop tries the coast road during the regatta.
The editor marked the doubtful line with an Obelus and moved on.
The keypad instructions still say to press the octothorpe, which nobody calls it.
Standing in the departures hall, she felt a sharp pang of onism, all those cities she would never see.
The wind farm shifted the whole paradigm of the island's economy.
He bought a quire of cream paper for the wedding invitations.
Their rendezvous point was the clock above the flower stall.
The scion of the brewing family drives the delivery van himself.
Pure serendipity put the last campsite next to the best bakery in the region.
Watching lit windows from the night train, he was overcome by sonder.
The Jacobean comedy turns on a wittol who toasts his own disgrace.
Sourdough classes captured the zeitgeist for one strange spring.
A double rainbow over the marquee felt auspicious, whatever the forecast said.
The cat went ballistic the moment the vacuum entered the room.
The harbor pub is at its most convivial when the tide keeps the boats in.
The enormous wolfhound took the biscuit with a surprisingly dainty bite.
Beach sculptures are ephemeral by design, gone with the evening tide.
The panel show trades in fatuous questions and somehow stays charming.
The committee grew fractious once the biscuit budget came up.
The head gardener has an imperious way with volunteers and weeds alike.
An insouciant gull worked through the stolen chips in front of the whole queue.
A noisome smell from the harbor at low tide keeps the terrace tables empty.
Reindexing the parish records proved operose beyond all expectation.
The lighthouse keeper was famously pauciloquent, spending whole shifts on a single sentence.
His peristeronic obsession filled the back garden with coops and soft cooing.
The silence after the last chord was more profound than any applause.
The chess club's most puissant player is nine years old.
The museum's quirky collection runs from whale bones to bus tickets.
She explained the inheritance in a roundabout way that took two pots of tea.
The after-dinner speech was billed as scintillating and, for once, it was.
The children sat spellbound through the entire shadow-puppet show.
The waiter gave the wet hikers a supercilious once-over before seating them.
A timorous knock at the door turned out to be the new apprentice.
Scaffolding is ubiquitous in the old town every summer.
The salesman's unctuous manner undid three months of careful advertising.
The census taker, thorough to a fault, noted that the whole family was ulotrichous.
Her reaction to the foghorn was visceral, twenty years after leaving the coast.
The best man chose to absquatulate before the speeches, taking the car keys with him.
Lizards apricate on the churchyard wall from ten until noon.
The Victorian editor saw fit to bowdlerize every interesting scene in the novel.
The new ticket machine continues to bumfuzzle visitors and locals alike.
Allotment applications burgeon every January and thin out by March.
The shanty crew carouse until closing, then sing their way back to the harbor.
The council begged picnickers not to defile the spring with litter.
The lecture series aims to edify rather than entertain, and mostly manages both.
The bakery's owner continues to eschew card payments, to the tourists' despair.
He managed to finagle two tickets to the sold-out regatta dinner.
One flooded basement did more to galvanize the residents than years of leaflets.
The rivalry served to kindle her best writing in years.
The village continues to lionize its one Olympic rower.
The harbor cat prefers to mooch between the fishmonger and the chip shop.
Asked about the missing trophy, the captain began to prevaricate.
The cook had to rejigger the menu when the entire catch turned out to be mackerel.
Gallery openings are where he goes to schmooze, not to look at art.
The deputy did not so much inherit the role as usurp it, one agenda at a time.
Three bakeries vie for the same commuters every morning.
Ivy wreathes the entire north wall of the rectory.
Watching him xertz a pint of lemonade after the race was a spectacle in itself.
Gulls yammer over the harbor from first light.
The old spaniel backed against the gatepost to reach its acnestis.
The toddler continued to bibble happily through the entire christening.
Volunteers festoon the pier with bunting every June.
The painters promised a fortnight and stayed a season.
The tide line was strung with jetsam, rope ends and one defiant rubber boot.
The keel lay exposed at low water.
The junk shop offers a melange of sheet music, oars, and unmatched china.
The diaries record a slow metanoia, from ambition to something gentler.
Her grandfather called anyone in a coat before November nesh.
The trip was ostensibly for research, though the golf clubs suggested otherwise.
The saga names the raider's sister-son as his heir.
The oracle spoke, and straightway the fleet made for open water.
The band's zenith lasted one summer and two festival stages.
Acumen with tide tables matters more here than any qualification.
The lexicographer delighted in labeling the swaggering apprentice a Hirquiticke.
Magnate or not, he still queues at the same fish counter as everyone else.
Her refusal of the award was pure Accismus, and the committee knew it.
A Waif of a kitten adopted the bookshop in October.
Wreathe the doorway in ivy and the cottage looks a century older.
Uncommon English words range from useful rarities like serendipity, zeitgeist, and ubiquitous to genuine obscurities like meldrop, the drop that hangs at the end of a nose, and acnestis, the spot on your back you cannot reach to scratch. The most rewarding ones name a familiar experience that common vocabulary skips.
Try octothorpe, the hash symbol on a keypad; quire, a set of paper sheets; agelast, a person who never laughs; and sonder, the realization that every stranger has a life as full as your own. Bastion, scion, and conundrum are rarer than everyday nouns but still familiar enough for general readers.
An uncommon word earns its place when it is more precise than the common alternative, or when its sound and strangeness suit the moment. One well-placed rarity can make a sentence memorable. A paragraph full of them makes readers feel quizzed, so treat them as seasoning rather than the meal.
Learn them in sentences rather than as flashcard definitions, then use each new word in your own writing within a day or two. Favor words that fill a real gap in your vocabulary over words that merely sound impressive. If you would hesitate to say it aloud in conversation, let it rest until it feels natural.
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