As loath as I am to acknowledge it, sometimes I find a really cool resource, such as a useful website. I’ll access it for a period of time then forget about it. Then someone else will find it, I’ll check it out, and say, “Hey, I’ve been here before!”
This is the case for The Phrontistery. It contains “English obscure words and etymology resources; an online dictionary of weird and unusual words; word lists; technical vocabulary aids; lipograms; and word-related essays. Someone on the A Way With Words Facebook page posted about it. They proclaimed, “Stumbled across this… and immediately thought: ‘Uh-oh, there goes all of my free time for the next few months.'”
Steve Chrisomalis notes, “Since 1996, I have compiled word lists and language resources to spread the joy of the English language in all its variety through time and space. A phrontistery (from the Greek phrontistes – ‘thinker’) is meant to be a thinking-place for reflection and intellectual stimulation.”
Check out:
International House of Logorrhea -A 17,000-word dictionary of rare, cool, and unusual words
Compendium of Lost Words – 400 of the rarest words on the internet
Short Scrabble Words – From AA to ZUZ
A Loquacious Location of Lipograms – You’ll want to click on this link – do it and find out why!
Glossographia – A blog about linguistics, anthropology, and writing systems
Numerals and Numeration – Quirky facts and features about number systems
Glossaries – Over 30 topic-specific word lists
Contact – Email, Twitter, carrier pigeon
And in fact…
I never wrote about The Phrontistery per se, as far as I can tell, unless I misspelled the word. However, twice I linked to it, both for posts for ABC Wednesday, and each time involving the same difficult letter of the alphabet. In 2010, I found three-letter words that use the letter X. Then in 2014, I shared a list of unusual words beginning with X.
I’ve found several references to it, from ESL clubs to empowerment sites. And finding the right word certainly can be empowering.