Further to my earlier post ‘Word for Wednesday’, I have now got a few more words rattling around in my brain, begging for release into the mighty blogosphere to be enjoyed. So here they are in all their glory!

Hobbledehoy. What a great word this is. My mum used to favour this word when warning us not to hang around with undesirables! Actually it means  ‘clumsy or awkward youth’ (that part summed me up pretty well actually) usually a boy. (You can’t win them all)!

Flighty. This word always makes me laugh. My two grandmothers had quite a bit of rivalry going on and my mum’s mum used to refer to my dad’s mum as being ‘flighty’. The reason for this was that my nan never married and nobody knew who my dad’s father was. This was rather shocking in 1929 and it was rumoured that she rather favoured the odd dalliance with a soldier! Flighty has a few definitions amongst which are: ‘irresponsible or silly behaviour, easily excited, skittish and flirtatious!

Cripes! This sounds very Enid Blyton to me! It is a kind of exclamation. As in. “Oh Cripes I forgot to bring along the ginger beer!” Or perhaps ” Cripes, I’ve just stubbed my toe, and I have an ingrown toenail)! A little on the namby-pamby (we’ll do that one next) side to me. Not much venom attached to it for my liking. It doesn’t quite cut it when you are hopping around in agony with a throbbing toe! That is where your good old ‘f’ word comes in handy!

Namby-Pamby. This is a lovely word. I like it even better because it rhymes (I am easily pleased). It can be used to describe a person as well, for example. “Oooh, look at him writing all that flowery poetry, he’s a bit of a namby-pamby.”  The meaning for this wonderful word is ‘weak, spineless, or sentimental.

Spiffing. This is a word that was used a lot by posh people in the past. Something like, “Oh Penelope, it would be simply spiffing if you could come to the Masquerade Ball” It just means ‘excellent’ or ‘splendid’ – but spiffing sounds so much better to me!

Rambunctious. Fabulous word, this one. It would probably have been used for something like this. ” Look at those rambunctious louts over there, causing a disturbance. Somebody had better call the Police!” The general meaning is ‘turbulent, difficult to control. noisy and out of hand.’

Well I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane of seldom used words as much as I did writing it!