About bumblepuppies and mammiferous hamadryads

Why is it that the words we most like to say and most like to hear are so often words that are hardly ever used? Meanwhile words we don't like the sound of — such as no, fattening, gut, war, gun violence and politically correct — are heard all the time.

Take the word bumblepuppy. Have you ever heard the word spoken? Me neither. But wouldn't it be fun to use it in conversation? It is the name of a game played with a tennis ball tied to a post, a game I have never played or seen anyone else play. So the word goes unused and we have to settle for pickleball, which isn't bad. The word bumblepuppy has actually been given other meanings to increase its use, but those other meanings — a particular fishing fly, for example — haven't helped much.

A hamadryad, according to one artist

Then there's hamadryad, which can mean either an Abyssinian baboon, a tree-dwelling nymph or a certain venomous Indian snake, none of them things we are likely to talk about. And so the delicious word goes mostly unused.

Mammiferous simply means having breasts, so it could be used more often if it weren't so impolite and, in most cases, so unnecessary. Even so, it is fun to say.

I would love to be able to use the word firkin in conversation, but until I find myself discussing a small tub of butter I am out of luck.

Some enjoyable words are much more common and most people know the meanings of them, yet even so we rarely have the chance to either say them or hear them. I am thinking of words like lollipop, daffodil, ephemeral, lullaby and rutabaga.

A slang version of daffodil is daffodowndilly, which is more rare but also much more fun to say.