Advice to writers: don’t be TOO obscure
A good candidate for The Most Obscure Word In English is “asynartisia” — it doesn’t appear in most dictionaries (even gigantic ones), and it seems to have been used only three times ever. That’s not counting the times it appears in online discussions about what the heck it means, of course.
There are a couple of apparently related words in the big unabridged dictionaries: “asynartete” and “anynartectic.” Look them up and it will be immediately evident why “asynartisia” is in the running for the champion of obscurity. “Asynartete” is defined by Mirrian-Webster Unabridged as “containing disparate or unconnected rhythmic units” either “with unhomogeneous rhythms in the two members distinguished by the caesura” or “with diaeresis, hiatus, or syllaba anceps at the caesura so that a quasi independence of the two members is effected.”
What that definition seems to be talking about (I’m only about 75% sure about this) is Latin and Greek classical poetry. A “caseura” is a break, and I think what it’s saying is that an “asynartectic” line is one where the break (and thus the meter or rhythm) isn’t the same as the preceding and following lines.
The three occurrences of “asynartisia” are nearly as odd as the definition of “asynartectic” (keeping in mind that I couldn’t even find a definition of “asynartisia” itself. One is from “The Strange Case of Edward Gorey” by Alexander Theroux, where he talks about Gorey’s “…word of attrition and asynartisia.” The next one is from a review of that same book in a publication called “The Spook” that’s also pretty obscure:
“If I sound cruel, it’s because ultimately I can’t forgive any writer who can use the word asynartesia with a straight face, as Theroux did in those doomful first ten pages of his book. That’s not taking joy in obscure words, as Gorey often did. That’s telling the reader that you’ve got a bigger dictionary than he has.”
Another appearance of asynartisia is in fiction; a story by R. A. Lafferty in “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” in 1976:
“No good name had ever been found to describe the excellence and many-leveled meaning of this testimony on the walls. It had been called kakographia and syngramma and scribble-schnibble. It had been called zographia and ektyposis and ochsenscheiber. It had been called chromatisma and schediasma and oscenite. It had been called scherzi and motti and asynartesia. The Italians have called it graffita, and the name may have stuck.”
It seems R. A. Lafferty had a good time showing off his command of obscure words; they certainly took forever to look up. “Kakographia” is probably a variation of “cacographia”, which means bad writing. “Zographia” is drawing from life. “Ektyposis” means printing, I think. “Schediasma” seems to be an archaic word that’s either Latin or closely based on it, and means something like a written character sketch. Or possibly an actual sketch, as in a drawing. “Chromatisma,” as far as I can tell, is a Greek word that means coloring. “Syngramma” is also Greek, and means writing. “Scherzi” is a fun musical composition — or really more than one, because it’s the plural of “scherzo.” “Motti” is also a plural, of “motto.” Oscenite” is either from the Latin “oscen” and means a bird call that predicts the future, or else it’s from “obscen” and means obscene. As for “ochsenscheiber,” it sort of looks like German, which turns out to be pretty difficult to figure out if you don’t know the first thing about German.
In any case, paragraphs like that one above might be a clue as to why a few more people have heard of J. K. Rowling than know anything about R. A. Lafferty’s work.
