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.

The sentences above contain five words most people have never come across. "Fleshment" means the excitement that comes from a good start. "Hircine" means "smelling like a goat". "Novercal" means "to do with a stepmother".

"Antithalian" means "opposed to parties". "Infelicific" means "resulting in unhappiness".

All these words appear on the Merriam-Webster dictionary's list of "Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words".

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

There are many other interesting words on the list. One is "ultracrepidarian", defined as "giving opinions on matters outside your knowledge".

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

One of the most beautiful is "apricitie", which means "the warmness of the Sun in winter".

But are these words pointless? A good many of them actually seem very useful.

Take "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.  

Should we defend uselessness?

Yes! A world which only included useful things would be very boring indeed. The things that make life worth living are often silly or beautiful or funny - not useful.

No! There are lots of things to be getting on with in today's busy world. We should get rid of anything which we do not really need.