Dictionary Quiz

Fictionary: The Game of Word Wizardry and Witty Definitions

There’s a game people play called Fictionary in which an obscure word is ferreted out of a dictionary by a quizmaster/mistress. Players have to write a definition for that word without knowing what it means.

The quizperson also writes down the correct definition. The answers are shuffled and read out, and players pick what they believe to be the correct definition.

For highly competitive people, a scoring system can be added, say, a point for getting the right answer and another for people picking your wrong definition.

Wordplay and Wine: Challenging Your Vocabulary with a Twist

Wine also helps the game go along with verve and creativity.

This offering is a slight variation in which 20 words have four definitions, of which only one is correct. The right answers follow the quiz, but you wouldn’t cheat, would you? You have to provide your own wine. Sorry.

So, let's get started.

What Does the Word Snudge Mean?

• To walk about in such a way as to look busy.
• The collective noun for a group of snails.
• A wood-working tool used in the early Saxon era.
• The stage name of a vaudeville ventriloquist in the 1920s.

“The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”

— G. K. Chesterton

What Does the Word Pantechnicon Mean?

• A non-stick coating applied to cookware.
• Fish-eye lens used on cameras.
• A furniture or moving van.
• A bespoke tailor’s work table.

"I like the word ‘indolence.’ It makes my laziness seem classy.”

— Bern Williams

What Does the Word Wamblecropt Mean?

• A place where hay was stored in Elizabethan England.
• Suffering from indigestion.
• The headland around a field of oats that is not cultivated.
• A kid’s puppet show that played on KTIV, Sioux City, Iowa in the 1950s.

“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘check enclosed.’ ”

— Dorothy Parker

Recommended

Emily Dickinson's "If those I loved were lost"

What Does the Word Aeolist Mean?

• A pompous person claiming to have special insight.
• A harp player.
• Someone who writes lengthy and boring passages.
• A Greek wine maker.

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.”

— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

What Does the Word Edentulous Mean?

• Having no teeth.
• A typographical instruction used in printing.
• Scientific name for the trunks of elephants.
• An imagined paradise

How Did You Do? Check Your Answers

Snudge - To walk about in such a way as to look busy.

Moue - An expression of displeasure; pursed lips.

Callypygian - Having perfectly shaped buttocks.

Galactophagist - An animal that exists on milk.

Pantechnicon - A furniture or moving van.

Cruciferous - Group of vegetables related to cabbage.

Persiflage - Witty, light-hearted chatter.

Stegophile - Someone who climbs urban structures.

Wamblecropt - Suffering from indigestion.

Querimonious - The act of complaining about everything.

Argute - Shrewd.

Crepuscular - Relating to twilight.

Aeolist - A pompous person claiming to have special insight.

Forwallowed - Fifteenth-century word meaning tired from disturbed sleep.

Crapulence - An extreme hangover.

Susurration - The soft scratching sound made by, for example, dried leaves moving over a stone patio.

Edentulous - Having no teeth.

Punnet - A small container for vegetables and fruit.

Balter - Dancing clumsily.

Virago - Strong, war-like woman.

Bonus Factoids

• The Oxford English Dictionary contains 615,000 words.
• Schoolmaster is an anagram of “the classroom.”
• The shortest word in English to contain the letters abcdef is feedback
• The letter “E” accounts for 11 percent of the entire English language. The 1939 novel Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright does not contain a single letter “E.”
• No wine was wasted during the creation of this quiz.

Related Articles

• Words Lost and Found
  A compendium of words you may never come across again.
• Another Alphabet of Weird Words
  Here are 26 words that you will likely never find a way of elbowing into a conversation.
• 26 Strange, Obscure, and Wonderful Words From A to Z
  This article lists and defines 26 unusual words alphabetically.

Sources

A throng of thesauruses, loads of lexicons, and dozens of dictionaries.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2018 Rupert Taylor

Comments

Rupert Taylor (author) from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on June 30, 2018:

Susan. I know you believe everything works better with wine and so do I. And no matter how rank the vintage it rarely provokes a moue.

Rupert Taylor (author) from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on June 30, 2018:

Rochelle that's a cruel challenge.

Susan Edwards on June 30, 2018:

A similar game is called Balderdash. And it also works better with wine.

Rochelle Frank from California Gold Country on June 30, 2018:

Now, write a short fiction using all of those words.

("Repaid" is "diaper" spelled backwards.)

threekeys on June 29, 2018:

Alas, no wine to accompany me in this word adventure Rupert. However, loads of fun! I liked the sound of sussuration. Ha! As for for the aeolist I thought of aeriole. Talk about one's thought moving in very different directions.