Favorite rare words, A-C

Logolatry

Abasia -- inability to walk due to lack of muscular coordination.

Aboulia -- inability to make decisions.

Adamitism -- nakedness for religious reasons.

Adeem -- to cancel a bequest by destruction of the bequested object.

Aegis -- protection, support.

Agiotage -- playing the stock market.

Ait -- small island in lake or river.

Alexia -- inability to read.

Algolagnia -- sexual pleasure derived from inflicting pain.

Allolallia -- Speech disorder featuring randomly spoken words.

Alphonsin -- instrument used to extract bullets from bodies.

Anhedonia -- Unresponsiveness to pleasure.

Aphemia -- loss of ability to produce articulate speech.

Apharasia, aphasia -- inability to speak.

Apodysophilia -- feverish desire to undress.

Apophasis -- saying something by stating that you will not mention it.

Aubade -- musical announcement of dawn.

Austringer -- keeper of goshawks.

Automysophobia -- fear of being dirty.

Balistraria -- cross-shaped opening in wall for firing arrows.

Ballottement -- diagnosis of pregnancy by applying sharp force to abdomen.

Barnard -- member of gang of thieves who acts as a decoy.

Batten -- timber used to fasten down a door or hatch.

Bellecism -- inclination towards violence, hawkishness (French as well, of course).

Bethel -- place of worship for seamen.

Bight -- wide bay; or bend or coil in a rope.

Bitts -- posts mounted on a ship for fastening ropes.

Blissom -- subject to or having strong sexual desires.

Blype -- piece of skin that peels off after a sunburn.

Bogan -- quiet tributary or backwater.

Bollard -- short post on a wharf of ship to which ropes are tied.

Boman -- well-dressed criminal.

Brasero -- place where criminals and heretics are burned.

Bream -- to clean a ship's bottom by burning off seaweed.

Burke -- to suppress quietly, to bypass or avoid.

Byssus -- mummy-wrapping fabric.

Cabotage -- coastal trade between points in the same country.

Cacotopia -- a state of being in which everything is as bad as it can be.

Caesura -- natural breathing space in a line of verse.

Callipygous -- having beautiful buttocks.

Camarilla -- secret society of favourites of the king.

Carfax -- place where four roads meet (not LA's leading cause of road
accidents).

Catasta -- scaffole or stage for torture or for selling slaves.

Cavil -- to raise trivial and frivolous objections.

Chelonian -- pertaining to turtles or tortoises.

Cienega -- marsh or swamp.

Cisvestism -- wearing strange or inappropriate clothes.

Cledonism -- circumlocution to avoid speaking unlucky words.

Clew -- corner of sail with hole to attach ropes.

Cloaca -- sewer, toilet, cesspool of moral filth.

Clyster -- enema.

Coaming -- raised edge around ship's hatches to keep water out.

Codswallop -- something utterly senseless, nonsense.

Conaiker -- coin counterfeiter.

Counterfoil -- part of ticket or cheque retained by giver.

Crepitus -- fart.

Cuddy -- right of a landlord to entertainment from a tenent.

Cynanthropy -- pathological belief that one is a dog.

Cyprian -- lewd woman, prostitute.

Selected from Steve Chrisomalis's wonderful Forthright's Phrontistery site.