11 words you didn't know existed

The other day I acquired some notoriety (again!) by tweeting out a new “Word of the Day” — algospeak, a noun, for words used on social media posts to avoid using other words that algorithms might identify as unsuitable or inappropriate and so filter. “Algospeak” is a means of bypassing content moderation filters on social media platforms to avoid having your posts removed or down-ranked by content moderation systems. For instance, saying “unalive” rather than “dead”. Now you didn’t know there was a word for that practice, did you?

Algospeak is a neologism — a new coinage invented for a recent need that didn’t exist before — but English is full of very precise words for very common features we take for granted, words we didn’t know even existed, and probably never felt the need for. For instance, philtrum is the vertical groove on your upper lip, below your nostrils. Bizarrely, seductive powers were once attributed to this common facial feature, so the Greek word for “love potion” — philtrum — was used for it. Now when was the last time you went gaga over someone’s philtrum?

Similarly, the smooth portion of the forehead between the eyebrows is called the glabella. Can you think of any time when you were so struck by someone’s forehead that you rhapsodised over his glabella? Or examined her nails to baptise the crescent-shaped or half-moon whitish mark at the base of the fingernail a lunule? If you’re besotted with someone’s nails to the point that you need to name the marks on them, a ring might be more useful than a word!

Everyone ties shoelaces at some point or the other in their lives, but did you know there’s a word for the tiny metal or hard plastic at the tip of both ends of a lace that reinforces it? It’s called an “aglet”, a word that comes from the Latin acus, or needle — as does the word “acute”. But the protective point or knob on the far end of an umbrella isn’t called an aglet; it’s a ferrule (which is also the term for the metal band at the end of a table leg),