Do words like velleity, nimiety and sorites mean nothing to you? Perhaps you need a Frank Miles Online Dictionary

From all the reminiscences shared by KCS English teacher Frank Miles’s former pupils since the great man died earlier this year at the age of 92, it’s obvious that, as well as all the mannerisms, verbal tics, his unique teaching style, his humour, rumours about his past life and his many acts of spontaneous kindness, one of the aspects of the man that have enabled us to recall him in his pomp with such powerful clarity was his extraordinary vocabulary. (I alluded to it in a previous post, here.)

There have been many email exchanges in which Frank’s boys have tried to capture some sort of definitive list of the words with which he routinely peppered his lessons – and our brains. Of course, not all of his critical vocabulary was obscure – after all he wasn't inventing a private language – but, taken as a whole, there was something distinctly arcane about it. Here’s where the list - much of which was created by Rod Conway Morris - has got to so far (the definitions are either my own, or pinched from the OED):

arcane 
mysterious, secret e.g. arcane knowledge

atavistic 
ancient, ancestral, e.g. “Britons display an atavistic fear of snakes”

banausic 
sounds like a type of vinegar, but it actually means “mundane”

bathetic 
producing an unintended anticlimax

concrete
real, solid

contumacious 
wilfully disobedient – often used to modify “muttering”

egregious 
really, really dreadfully bad

emotive 
engendering emotion – not a synonym for “emotional”: Frank often used it to imply that a writer was straining to wring an emotional response from the reader

enervating
draining of energy or vitality - although increasingly used to mean the exact opposite by semi-literate TV folk

epicene 
effeminate, asexual, lacking vigour

expiation 
the act of making amends

excoriate
criticise severely

gnomic 
Frank used it to mean riddling, enigmatic

lapidary 
a concise, elegant or cogent statement, sentence or poem suitable for engraving on stone

mawkish
nauseatingly sentimental

meretricious
apparently attractive but having no real value

minatory 
threatening, often in a supernatural context

nimiety 
the state of being more than is necessary or desirable; excess

nugatory 
of no value

orchidaceous 
relating to orchids, obviously, though I vaguely remember Frank using it to mean over-ripe or showy? I'm probably wrong.

otiose 
serving no useful purpose

predilection
preference or bias in favour of something

religiose 
affectedly religious

solecism
linguistic or grammatical impropriety – e.g. any sentence uttered by Lord Sugar

sorites-like
The Sorites Paradox: when you remove single grains of sand from a heap, when does it stop being a heap? (Sorites means” heap” in Greek.)

velleity 
a wish too weak to lead to action – e.g. “The notion intrigued me, but remained a velleity” or "Ed Miliband wanted to teach the Syrian regime a lesson, but that desire proved no more than a velleity".

I don't claim to use a lot of Frank words in everyday conversation - I'm certain that sorites-like, banausic and nimiety haven't passed my lips for 42 years (to be honest, I'd completely forgotten what they meant before looking them up just now). But others - minatory, mawkish and enervating - have come in very handy over the years.

There's a lively dicussion taking place about erecting some sort of memorial to Frank at King's College School, Wimbledon. I wonder if there shouldn't also be some sort of Frank Miles Online Dictionary - which, would, of course, be entirely non-frangible (as he might very well have put it).