Your doctor just broke the news to you: you have a bad case of rhinorrhea. Not only that, you’ve a touch of oscitancy and a bit of sudation too.

Prognosis? You have a runny nose, you’re yawning, and you’re sweaty. All of which adds up to, while not exactly a pretty picture, nothing too serious.

Here are 10 more conditions that sound more serious than they actually are.

borborygmus

“Wind is like the human breath, rain like secretions, and thunder like borborygmus.”

Ch’ung Wang, Lun-hêng: Philosophical essays of Wang Chʻung, 1907

Borborygmus is the sound of a rumbling tummy caused by gas. The word comes from the Greek borboryzein, “to have a rumbling in the bowels,” and is imitative in origin.

ephelides

“Medically known as ephelides, freckles are usually an inherited trait in families with blond or red hair and fair skin.”

Joan Liebmann-Smith, PhD and Jacqueline Egan, “Using Your 5 Senses to Make Sense of Your Baby’s Body Signs,” The Huffington Post, July 5, 2010

The ominous-sounding ephelides, Greek in origin, are more commonly known as freckles. Lentigo is another word for freckle and comes from the Latin lens, lent-, or “lentil.”

eructation

“Mr. P. is sullen, and seems to mistake an eructation for the breaking of wind backwards.”

Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, 1751

Eructation is a fancy way of saying “an instance of belching.” It comes from the Latin eructare, which means — you guessed it — “to belch.”

A fancy way of saying “an instance of farting,” in case you were wondering, is flatus. Flatus comes from the Latin word for “wind,” which also gives us flatulent.

horripilation

“The clergyman prayed aloud, when in a few moments, piercing shrieks were heard issuing from the oven. The whole company were in a state of horripilation.”

John Roussel, The Silver Lining, 1894

Horripilation is “the bristling of the body hair, as from fear or cold,” more commonly known as goose bumps, goose pimples, or gooseflesh. Horripilation comes from the Latin horripilare, where horrere means “to tremble” and pilare means “to grow hair.”

Of all the goose terms, gooseflesh — named of course for its resemblance to that of a plucked goose — is the oldest, originating around 1834, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Goose pimples came about around 1889 and goose bumps in 1933.

Goosebumps is also the name of a popular children’s horror series of books by R.L. Stine.

lacrimation

“For those of you unfamiliar with the makeover episode of America’s Next Top Model, know that it typically brings out tears, and I’m talking Niagara-like lacrimation.”

Disgrasion, “The ‘Ethnically Ambiguous’ Are So Last Season,” The Huffington Post, October 27, 2008

Lacrimation is “the secretion of tears, especially in excess,” otherwise known as crying. The word comes from the Latin lacrimare, “to weep.”

onychophagy

“M. Bertillon now tells us that biting the nails is a sign of degeneracy and gives it the hard name of ‘onychophagy.’”

The American Homoeopathist, Volume 19, 1893

Onychophagy is the habit of biting one’s nails. The word ultimately from the Greek onux, “claw, nail,” and phagos, “eater.”  Onux also gives us onyx while phagos can be found in words like esophagus.

pandiculation

“If you’ve observed th’ awakened cat
Or one just risen from meditation —
She’ll stretch tremendously — well that
Is what is called ‘pandiculation.’”

George W. E. Daniels, “Pandiculation,” Medical Pickwick, Volume 7, 1921

Pandiculation is the act of stretching accompanied by yawning. The word ultimately comes from the Latin pandere, “to stretch.”

singultus

“Hiccups, more officially referred to as singultus (from the Latin, ‘to catch your breath while sobbing’), are repeated, spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm causing a quick inhalation that is then cut short by an involuntary closing of the glottis.”

Lisa Sanders, “A Serious Case of the Hiccups,” The New York Times, September 25, 2011

There are many “cures” for singultus, including drinking a glass of water upside-down, being scared, and placing sugar under the tongue. The record for longest bout of hiccups belongs to Charles Osborne, who hiccuped from 1922 to 1990.

The word hiccup is imitative in origin. An earlier form is hickop, which seems to be an alteration of the older hicket or hyckock. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that an Old English word for hiccup was ælfsogoða, “elf hiccup,” which was “so called because hiccups were thought to be caused by elves.”

Hiccough, according to the OED, was a later spelling of hiccup, “apparently under the erroneous impression that the second syllable was cough.” This spelling, the OED suggests, “ought to be abandoned as a mere error.”

sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia

“No one really knows why, but scientists think that stabbed-in-the-forehead feeling (sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia) occurs when the temperature of your palate doesn’t have time to normalize between spoonfuls of flavored ice.”

“How To: Land a Plane, Cure Brain Freeze, Get on Reality TV,” WIRED Magazine, May 19, 2008

No, it’s not a tumor. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, more commonly known as ice-cream headache or brain freeze, happens when you eat cold things, like ice cream, too quickly.

Sphenopalatine refers to “the sphenoid bone and the palate,” in other words the roof of your mouth, while ganglioneuralgiarefers means nerve pain, or neuralgia, of the ganglion, “a group of nerve cells forming a nerve center, especially one located outside the brain or spinal cord.”

Ice-cream headache, a temporary condition, may be remedied in a number of simple ways.

sternutation

“Prometheus was the that wisht well to the sneezer, when the man, which he had made of clay, fell a fit of sternutation, upon the of that celestial fire which he stole the sun.”

William Carew Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore, 1905

While a sternutation may sound like a tough talking to, it actually refers to a sneeze. The word comes from the Latin sternuere, “to sneeze.”

Sneeze, in case you were wondering, comes from the Old English fneosan, “to snort, sneeze.” Fn-, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, might have been misread has sn-, or else fnese was reduced to nese, and sneeze was “a ‘strengthened form’ of this, ‘assisted by its phonetic appropriateness.’” In other words, the word sneeze kind of sounds like the act of sneezing.

For even more harmless yet serious-sounding conditions, check out this list.

[Photo: “Blowing my nose,” CC BY 2.0 by superhua]
[Photo: “Andy at the Getty,” CC BY 2.0 by Kevin Dooley]
[Photo: “DSC_4804,” CC BY 2.0 by yoppy]
[Photo: “Ice Cream Headache?” CC BY 2.0 by Jereme Rauckman]

Have you always wanted a word for the sound of rustling leaves? How about the fine spray of water swept from the tops of waves during a sea storm? You’re in luck: those words exist along with eight more unusual nature words we should use more often.

apricity

“But, you see, I’m a little too warm, for the road is opposite the apricity all the way, and the sun is rather hottish this morning.”

“The Husband-Love,” The Dublin University Magazine, Volume 20, July to December 1842

Most of us have experienced apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter. So why not use it every sunny winter day?

Apricity comes from the Latin apricus, “having lots of sunshine” or “warmed by the sun.” To apricate means to bask in the sun.

estivation

“In the evenings, while they force down obligatory eight-course gastronomies prepared by celebrity chefs at Relais & Chateaux resorts, we contentedly order the plat du jour at a little bistro not far from our humble two-star hotel — simple economies that help make our vacation savings last our four-week estivation.”

“Letter from France: Call Me in September,” Newsweek, August 8, 2004

Estivation is “the act of passing the summer.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word comes from the Latin aestivation-, aestivatio, which means “summer pasturing,” and in botany, the “folded arrangement of petals and sepals in a flower bud.”

Earlier this month estivate was Fritnancy’s word of the week.

frondescence

“The foliage of the trees is nearly as late as last year. The oak and beech have as yet hardly any appearance of frondescence.”

Philosophical Magazine and Journal, 1817

While it’s true most of us won’t have the opportunity to use frondescence to refer to “the time at which each species of plants unfolds its leaves,” it also means foliage in general.

hyemation

“I hope however to get home within this fortnight and about the end of October to my hyemation in Dover street.”

Samuel Pepys, Memoirs of Samuel Pepys

While estivation refers to the passing of summer in a particular place, hyemation means the passing of winter. It comes from the Latin hiemāre, “to winter,” and ultimately hiems, “winter.”

Hibernate, while related, comes from the Latin hīberna, “winter quarters,” and hībernus, “wintry.”

moonglade

“Do you know what happened to the Youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he sailed right into a moonglade.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, “A Soul That Was Not at Home,” Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922

The Turkish gumusservi, “moonlight shining on water,” is often included in lists of awesome words with no English equivalent. However, we’d argue there is one: moonglade, “the track of moonlight on water.”

A glade, in addition to meaning “an open space in a forest,” also once referred to “a clear or bright space in the sky; a flash (of light or lightning),” says the OED.

noctivagant

“The bat that can resist all these inducements must be little better than a brickbat, and yet who ever knew one of those wayward, noctivagant creatures to condescend even to such terms?”

James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, Letters

While noctivagant, wandering in the night, mainly refers to animals, we see an easy application to all things night-wandering. A night owl on an evening stroll, post-party drunks, insomniac superheroes — all noctivagant in our book.

ombrophobous

“With reference to their behavior toward precipitation, plants are ombrophilous, or rain-loving, or ombrophobous, or rain-fearing.”

Roscoe Pound, Frederic Edward Clements, “Physiography,” Phytogeography of Nebraska

Are you ombrophilous, rain-loving, or ombrophobous, rain-shunning? The ombro- part of both words comes from the Greek ombros, “rain shower,” while –philous comes from philos, “loving,” and –phobous from phobos “fear, panic, terror.”

Umbrella, in case you were wondering, has a different origin. It comes from the Latin umbella, “parasol,” and is influenced by umbra, “shade.”

petrichor

“The scientific name for the earthy smell after rain is petrichor from the Greek petra, stone + ichor, the liquid that flows in the veins of the Greek gods.”

“Quite Interesting Facts about Smell,” The Telegraph, October 6, 2011

Petrichor, “the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a long warm dry spell,” is one of our all-time favorite words. It was coined in 1964 by Australian researchers I. J. Bear & R. G. Thomas in Nature magazine:

The diverse nature of the host materials has led us to propose the name ‘petrichor’ for this apparently unique odour which can be regarded as an ‘ichor’ or ‘tenuous essence’ derived from rock or stone.

Petro– comes from the Greek petros, “stone,” and –ichor, “an ethereal fluid believed to supply the place of blood in the veins of the gods,” from the Greek ikhor. Related to ichor is the Icarus, he of the fake wings and ill-conceived jaunt to the sun.

psithurism

“Another day the sweet south is blowing; do you not see how the larch and lime palpitate with pleasure?. . . do you not hear the musical psithurism of the feathered foliage?”

Mortimer Collins, The Secret of a Long Life

Psithurism, the sound of rustling leaves, is another word we can’t believe isn’t used more often. The word is imitative and ultimately comes from the Greek psithuros, “whispering, slanderous.”

Another cool whispering word is susurrous, which refers to whispering or rustling in general.

spoondrift

“A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.”

James A. Cooper, Cap’n Abe, Storekeeper

While spoondrift, “a showery sprinkling of sea-water or fine spray swept from the tops of the waves,” has a more common modern form, spindrift, we prefer the obscure form.

The spoon- part of spoondrift has nothing to do with the utensil (which comes from the Old English spōn, “chip of wood”) but comes from the obsolete Scots spoon, “to run before the wind,” while drift is either derived from drive or borrowed from the Old Norse drift, meaning “snow drift,” or the Middle Dutch drift, meaning “pasturage, drove, flock,”

For even more unusual nature words, check out this list.

[Photo: “Miss J Basking in the Sun,” CC BY 2.0 by Aiko, Thomas & Juliette+Isaac]
[Photo: “Autumn Leaf Color in Garden (Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan),” CC BY 2.0 by t-mizo]
[Photo: “Moonlight, Castelldefels, Spain,” CC BY 2.0 by Sarah]
[Photo: “Rain,” CC BY 2.0 by Thomas8047]