100+ Interesting Words You Should Slip Into Conversation To Sound Intelligent

You send dozens of texts and spend hours talking every single day — but you are reusing most of your words. You are repeating yourself without even realizing you are doing so. There are hundreds of interesting words that you have never even heard of before (or you might have already heard but have no idea how to use them in a sentence).

It’s time to learn something new, to broaden your vocabulary, to sound even more eloquent than you already are. If you can find a way to slip these words into everyday conversation, you are going to look like the most intelligent person in the room.

Aa — a kind of volcanic lava that forms jagged masses with a light frothy texture

Abibliophobia — afraid of running out of things to read

Aquiver — trembling

Aurora — dawn

Aplomb — self-confident

Acnestis — between the shoulder blades and the loins which an animal cannot reach to scratch

Apropos — appropriate

Atrate — dressed in black

Agelast — a person who never laughs

Agastopia — admiration of a particular part of someone else’s body

Bibliopole — a person who buys and sells books, especially rare ones

Biblioklept — a person who steals books

Bibble — eating or drinking noisily

Bloviate — people who talk for a long period of time

Balter — dance clumsily

Bedizen — dress gaudily

Bleb — a blister

Boondoggle — a waste of time and money

Burke — murder without leaving a trace on the body

Borborygm — hungry

Bombinate — making a humming or buzzing noise

Bumbershoot — an umbrella

Cattywampus — in disarray

Collywobbles — a weird feeling in your stomach

Cahoots — secret partnership

Caruncle — the triangular, pink areas at the corner of your eyes

Churlish — rude

Compotation — a drinking party

Conspuer — to spit with contempt

Comeuppance — getting what you deserve

Cancatervate — heaping things into a pile

Cabotage — the exclusive right of a country to control the air traffic within its borders

Cromulent — appearing legitimate but actually being spurious

Donnybrook — an uprising, a melee, or a riot

Darkle — becoming cloudy or dark

Defenestration — the act of throwing someone out of a window

Denouement — the resolution of a narrative

Doodle sack — bag pipes

Duffifie — laying a bottle on its side for some time so that it may be completely drained of the few drops remaining

Draconian — unusually severe

Erinaceous — resembling a hedgehog

Ethereal — Extremely delicate, light, not of this world

Egress — an exit

Ennui — bordem

Erratum — an error in printing

Epistemology — the study of knowledge

Esoteric — knowledge that is only available to a select group of people

Epoch — A particular period of time in history or a person’s life

Eurhythmic — an aesthetically pleasing rhythm or structure

Flibbertigibbet — silly and overly talkative

Foppish — foolish, silly, obsolete

Fugacious — fleeting or transient

Fillip — snapping your fingers

Gubbins — an object that has little or no value

Grawlix — a series of symbols commonly used in comics or cartoons to represent curse words

Grommet — an eyelet of firm material to strengthen or protect an opening or to insulate or protect something passed through it

Hubris — excessive presumption, exaggerated pride or self-confidence

Halfpace — a platform of a staircase where the stair turns back in exactly the reverse direction of the lower flight

Hiraeth — A homesickness for a home you can’t return to, or that never was

Impignorate — pawning something

Interrobang — a punctuation mark designed for use especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question; usually written as ?!

Interfenestration — the space between two windows

Ineffable — Too great to be expressed in words

Jentacular — pertaining to breakfast

Jalopy — an old, decrepit, or unpretentious automobile

Kyphorrhinos — a nose with a bump in it

Lamprophony — loudness and clarity of enunciation

Limerence — being infatuated with another person

Logophile — lover of words

Lothario — a man whose chief interest is seducing women

Malarkey — insincere, foolish talk

Macrosmatic — having a good sense of smell

Meldrop — a drop of mucus at the nose, whether produced by cold or otherwise

Metanoia — a spiritual transformation

Meme — an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Nincompoop — an idiot

Nibling — the gender-neutral term for nieces or nephews

Nefarious — Wicked, villainous, despicable

Numinous — spiritual, supernatural

Nudiustertian — the day before yesterday

Oblivion — the state of being unaware of what is happening around you

Octothorpe  — the hashtag symbol

Obelus — the division symbol

Oxter — armpit

Pandiculation — yawning and stretching

Pauciloquent — someone who doesn’t say much

Pilgarlic — a bald head

Phosphenes — the light and colors produced by rubbing your eyes

Petrichor — The pleasant, earthy smell after rain

Preantepenultimate — fourth from last

Paresthesia — the prickly feeling when your limb “falls asleep.”

Poobah — a powerful person.

Pogonotrophy — growing and grooming a beard or other facial hair

Rasher — a thin slice of bacon

Taradiddle — filled with pretentious nonsense

Tergiversate — to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a caus

Snickersnee — a long, dangerous knife

Salopettes — high-waisted skiing pants with shoulder straps

Supine — Lying face upwards

Sonder — the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own

Schadenfreude — experiencing pleasure or satisfaction from the trouble, failure or humiliation of others

Somnambulist — A person who sleepwalks

Serendipity — The chance occurrence of events in a beneficial way

Snellen chart — the standard eye exam chart.

Scintillate — emitting sparks

Syzygy — an alignment of celestial bodies

Tittynope — a small quantity of something left over

Ulotrichous — having wooly or crispy hair

Quire — two dozen sheets of paper

Quixotic — unrealistically optimistic

Valetudinarian — a sickly or weak person, especially one who is constantly and morbidly concerned with his or her health

Vellichor — the strange wistfulness of used bookshops

Wabbit — exhausted

Widdershins — moving counter-clockwise

Winklepicker — a shoe with a long pointed toe

Yarborough — when the dealer deals a hand without any numbers above nine

Zoanthropy — a person who has delusions that they are a form of animal