In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations, and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no word exists.
On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
-- From the introduction by
Douglas Adams and
John Lloyd.
The words they use are all place names, a few of them familiar like Chicago, but mainly very obscure, and mostly from the British Isles. Not only do they describe all these situations and things we all know, but the name just sounds right for it. You think Yes, that should be what it's called.
I've seen people try to do imitations of this before, and get the principle quite wrong: e.g. defining a "clinton" as something to do with blow jobs. No no! The point is the word redefined is some inoffensive obscure place like Oodnadatta or Saskatoon, with no previous connexion to it.
A few of them are uninterestingly silly, but many do fill genuine needs. The fairy Fair Use allows the quoting of a few, as a taster. Here are some that I would find genuinely useful in everyday life, and indeed in liff.
The index is highly amusing too, though almost completely useless.
sideways would like me to add one: