Lisnaholic

^ Fumiphobia especially has a great sound to it; it's just a pleasure to say. This word, though, not so much:-

Subfusc looks like a word that hasn't been finished yet: a three-letter prefix is all but toppling over a four-letter root word so the whole thing looks off balance - and what other word in the language ends with "...sc" anyway ? This morning I found subfusc in a travel book published in 1939, and because of this thread, I went to the trouble of checking it in a dictionary. Turns out that it means "rather dark in colour, unimpressive", and the two "u"s are pronounced like the "u" in bus, so the sound is more or less "sabfask."

My verdict: ugly on the page, ugly in the mouth and unneccesarily arcane, I can't think of any reason to use it at all. To the active artists here who are writing songs, my rec is: Never put subfusc in your lyrics - imo Roger Waters made the right decision when he was working on the album originally entitled Subfusc Side Of The Moon.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953