The best words for describing people and their annoying habits
The subject of this post is somewhat niche, we’ll admit, but here at Interesting Literature we love the English language and the fact that at some point in its rich history a word has been invented for just about everything, or so it would seem. In this post we’ve confined ourselves to those particularly vexing and irritating things which people do – whether online, in person, outside your bedroom window, or in tedious meetings at work. It’s fascinating, for instance, to learn there’s a word for people who use overly long pretentious-sounding words. (In fact, there are several, but we’ll avoid getting unnecessarily sesquipedalian here.) If you enjoy these words, be sure to have a look at our list of rare but useful words everyone should know.
Girouettism is the practice of frequently altering personal opinions to follow popular trends. Aptly, it comes from a girouette, another name for a weather-cock. Just as a weather-cock changes its position according to the wind, so a figurative ‘girouette’ is a fair-weather sort who changes their metaphorical ‘position’ according to what’s ‘in’ at the moment. The term dates from the 1820s.