If you’re pressed for time before, say, a presentation or a task, sometimes you just wing it — you improvise, proceed in haste without preparation. That is, you autoschediaze.
“Autoschediaze” — which is pronounced with FIVE syllables: aw-toe-ske-di-ez — is the verb form of “autoschediastic.” That word showed up in English from either Greek or Latin in the 1640s. Both languages had about the same word, which meant to speak extemporaneously. Its earliest appearance was in 1641: “The birth how mean soever was nigh strangled in the cradle: Take it as it is, an autoschediastick.”
As if that wasn’t long enough, it wasn’t long before “autoschediastical” came on the scene, in the 1660s. But things were clearly getting out of hand, and by 1872 the word was being used humorously in Punch magazine: “If people don’t take an interest in things, I shall not eliminate sesquipedalianisms in an autoschediastical fashion to amuse them.”
It was around that time, the mid-1800s, that “autoschediaze” was put together. At first, of course, it had to be explained: “To auto-schediaze, or improvise, is sometimes in effect to be forced into a consciousness of creative energies, that would else have slumbered through life.”
Speaking of slumbering through life, that’s pretty much what autoschediaze has done. It may not be the most obscure word in English, but it’s definitely on the list. As far as anybody knows, other than obscure columns written about obscure words, it hasn’t been used in print since 1933: “Taking advantage of the time while the clerk was hunting for a document, autoschediased.”
I think it’s high time for “autoschediaze” to make a resurgence, though. Which, in this case, would really be more of a surgence, since the word has hardly ever been used and still has that new word smell. After all, right this second you’re reading something produced in “autoschediastical fashion.”
