Sharon groaned. She had felt real fleshment about organising her birthday party - but her hircine stepmother was limiting her to six guests. That was just so novercal! Steph was the most bad-tempered and antithalian person she had ever met: everything she did was infelicific. Could anything be done to abirritate her? And was there a backspang that could be used to invite more friends?

The paragraph above contains seven words that most people have never come across. "Fleshment" means the excitement that comes from a promising start. "Hircine" means "smelling like a goat". "Novercal" means "relating to a stepmother".

"Antithalian" means "opposed to festivities". "Infelicific" means "resulting in unhappiness". "Abirritate" means "to make less irritable". A "backspang" is a loophole.

All these words appear on what the Merriam-Webster dictionary calls its "Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words." The dictionary is based on the work of the leading 19th Century American lexicographerA person who makes dictionaries. Noah Webster.

"They're wonderful," it says of the words. "They're obscure. They're often quite pointless."

There are many other intriguing words on the list. One is "ultracrepidarian", defined as "giving opinions on matters beyond one's knowledge". It derives from a Latin phrase meaning "beyond the sole" and relates to something the painter ApellesApelles of Kos was a renowned Ancient Greek painter, known for his portrait of Alexander the Great. said when a shoemaker dared to criticise his work.¹

Another is "pennyweighter", meaning someone who steals a valuable piece of jewellery by substituting a fake for it.

One of the most beautiful is "apricitie", which was defined in 1623 as "the warmness of the Sun in winter". One of the most satisfying to say is "sloomy", meaning "sleepy or sluggish".

But are these words pointless? A good many of them actually seem very useful, and should arguably be revived.

Take "roorback", which means "a defamatory falsehood published for political effect". It has its origins in a maliciousDone with spite or intent to harm. rumour about an American presidential candidate which was started by someone using the pseudonymA false name used to protect a person's identity. of Baron Roorback.² Though it dates from 1841, it looks more relevant than ever in the age of fake news.

Then there is "accismus", which means "refusing something which you in fact want very badly". It is surely useful to have one word you can use instead of nine.  

Yes: A world which only included useful things would be very boring indeed. The things that make life worth living are often beautiful, funny or bizarre, without any practical application.

No: We live in an age where countless things are crying out for our attention. The only way to cope efficiently is to eliminate all those which do not immediately make it easier for us to function.

Or... It is risky to call anything useless. Things that you are tempted to throw away often turn out to be exactly what you need in an unexpected situation, so it is worth keeping them just in case.