English has some of the strangest words that they’ll never teach you in any English course, nor can you find them in a book or movie. That’s precisely why I wanted to collect and present a dozen of the rarest, weirdest and interesting words to pronounce in the English language. Here they are:

Serendipity

Meaning: To discover something beautiful by chance, that is when you are not looking for it.

In 2004, a list was made of the most difficult words to translate from English and ‘serendipity’ was one of them.

Gobbledygook

Meaning: Refers to texts that contain jargon or very complicated English words.

The particular “honor” of having invented this word falls to the American politician Maury Maverick, who in 1944 pronounced it for the first time in a speech.

Scrumptious

Meaning: Delicious enough to lick your fingers.

Finger-licking good!

Agastopia

Meaning: Admiration or fetishism for a certain part of someone’s body.

It appeared for the first time in the book 'Depraved English' by Peter Novobatsky

Halfpace

Meaning: The platform at the top of the ladder or steps.

Impignorate

Meaning: pawn or mortgage.

Jentacular

Meaning: When you eat your breakfast immediately after waking up.

Are you jentacular?

Nudiustertian

Meaning: As much as it sounds like some German holiday resort, it’s not. This word means “before yesterday”.

It is an obsolete term nowadays (and thank goodness!), Although you can still find it in some books. Today, it’s used ‘the day before yesterday’.

Quire

Meaning: It is a measure equivalent to about 24 or 25 sheets of paper.

The English and their measures…

Tittynope

Meaning: Small amount of leftovers in a dish, or sludge leftover in drinking glasses.

Did they have to invent a word for this? Was not the word ‘Leftovers’ enough?

Winklepicker

Meaning: Type of shoe or boot with a sharp toe. Very popular in the 1950s.

Yarborough

Meaning: A hand of cards in bridge which is worth less than 9.