Word of the Day: Mussitation

"Mussitation" is uttered by fifteen-year-old "geeky girl" Lace Turner as an example of a "big word" in Jan Karon's A New Song, my current lunchtime reading from the discard shelf at the library.

Mussitation (from the Latin mussitare) is muttering or murmuring. It's a medical term, used to describe the moving of the lips as though talking, with little or no sound issuing, as in delirium.

As opposed to psithurism (from the Greek) which means whispering. Or psittacism (from the Latin psittacu, parrot), which is meaningless, repetitive speech. Or psellism (back to Greek), which is stuttering, stammering, or any defect of enunciation caused by malformation of the vocal chords. Or pleonasm, which is redundant or superfluous speech.

Or battology--tireless repetition. Or gemination (from Latin geminus, twin)--duplication or repetition for rhetorical effect. Or ploce (from the Greek, meaning to plait)--repetition for emphasis.

Or bloggerel--repeating the same opinion ad nauseum in a blog. Or blogerhhea--running on and on in a blog. I'm going to stop now.