Pylimitics

Every profession seems to have its own jargon; specialized words for the specialized things that go on in that particular sphere. Sometimes some professional jargon breaks out to become more commonly used. Just about everybody in the US has at least a general idea what a “class action” is, but that was originally limited to legal jargon. Likewise, at one point only doctors would talk about “antidepressants.” 

Jargon is pretty close to the same thing as slang — really the main difference is the economic and social group using or inventing the specialized words or usage. If the group is defined by an economic activity, we usually call their argot “jargon.” If the group is defined by age, location, or social class, we call it “slang,” which makes “slang” more slang than jargon. 

Some professions — particularly if they’re unlikely to have the cultural magnetism of, say, advanced technology, law enforcement dramas, or emergency-room doctoring — are maintaining some pretty interesting and arcane words. 

Take, for example, “emuscation,” “stercoration,” “perflatile,” “introsume,” “decubation,” and “ablaqueation.” Any guesses about what you’re engaged in if you do any of these things? Here are some hints:

“Decubation” is the act of lying down (possibly not yourself personally).
“Introsume” is to absorb nourishment. 
“Perflatile” means “well ventilated” or “exposed to the wind”. 

Those are the more obscure hints available with that set of jargon terms, and they’re really not very helpful. So here are the ones that might give away the game:

“Stercoration” means using dung as manure.
“Ablaqueation” is loosening the soil around roots.
“Emuscation” is removing moss from the bark of a tree. 

And there you have it, a brief introduction to the jargon of arborists, the folks who care for trees! Now, as you’re probably expecting, there’s another sort of caveat here. I’m not entirely sure it will work if you to get a job at Joe’s Tree Service by mentioning your experience in stercoration or emuscation. It might, but it would probably depend on how much of an historian Joe turned out to be. The arborist jargon here comes from the slightly oddly titled book Sylva: A Discourse of Forest Trees & the Propagation of Timber by John Evelyn. He wrote it in 1664.