Rawgabbit and Curglaff made it to Wayne State University’s 2024 Word Warriors list

By Kara Nelson, CNN

(CNN) — Just when you thought the thunderplump was going to stop you from making it to the weekly kaffeeklatsch, the gray skies cleared, filling the air with misty petrichor. Now you get to listen to the blatherskite of your social circle go on about the tasteless dollop they cooked the night before.

Then afterward, maybe you can impress your friends with more unique words from Wayne State University’s 2024 Word Warriors List.

“What these words do is add a certain poetry and I think it makes our conversation more beautiful, more interesting,” said Christopher Williams, head of the Word Warriors Program.

The list mainly includes words that have been removed from modern dictionaries, conversations — and the average person’s memory.

“I’ll see these words that had almost no usage in like three or four decades,” Williams said.

Sometimes even centuries. ‘Pawky’, meaning to have a mockery or cynical sense of humor, first made its debut into conversations around 1640, according to Merriam-Webster.

And 400 years later the word is making a comeback into casual dialogues after making the 2024 lineup.

This year marks the 15th annual Words Warrior List. The chosen words are carefully chosen during the year before by public submissions on the program’s website and Facebook page.

“People can email the words that they come across in reading or in conversation that has just kind of been lost to time,” Williams told CNN. “We have people from Australia and from England who have submitted words.”

From the entries, the program then announces a new word each week. “And throughout the year I monitor the engagement on that and I see which ones are getting traction,” Williams explained.

At the end of the year, 10 are chosen from the 52 or so words to carry into the coming year.

One of Williams favorite words from this year’s list is twankle.

“It’s this idea of someone twanging absently in a musical instrument,” Williams said.

“I love it because as soon as I hear the word twankle, I can think of someone sitting on their porch with a guitar or a banjo.”

Other words making the list include: curglaff, rawgabbit, pettifogger, and another favorite for Williams — thunderplump.

“There is something really nice about saying thunderplump, you know, as opposed to saying downpour rain,” he said. “It just conjures up a certain image and that’s what we want from these words,” Williams added.

“It’s those perfect words to sprinkle into conversations to make their conversations and their writing so much more beautiful.”

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