Words at Play : 12 Oversized Words

#3: Agathokakological

Definition:

: composed of both good and evil

Example:

"For indeed upon the agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always to be found." — Robert Southey, The Doctor, 1834

About the Word:

Agathokakological is likely the creation of Robert Southey, a reviewer and poet who was born in Bristol in the late 18th century. This thorny mouthful is made by combining the Greek roots agath- (good), kako- (a variant of cac-, meaning bad), and -logical (the adjectival suffix based on logos, meaning word). Southey was exceedingly fond of peppering his writing with new coinages (The Oxford English Dictionary lists him as the earliest known author for almost 400 words), very few of which have caught on. The reason for this is that most of them tend to be rather unwieldy, and we haven't much need to adopt such specimens as futilitarian (a person devoted to futility), batrachophagous (frog-eating), and epistolization (letter writing) in our everyday discourse.

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