noun. ‘Light-heeled’ pranks.

If your wiues play legerdeheele, though you bee a hundred miles off, yet you shall be sure instantly to find it in your forheads.
All Fools, George Chapman (1605)

A play on the word legerdemain, which literally means “light of hand,” used to refer to sleight of hand or trickery and deception. In the citation above, legerdeheel refers specifically to infidelity, not a laughing matter. Except for the times that it is.

If being light of hands is prestidigitation, then being light of heel must be prestipeditation. Perhaps meaning that you can sneak off somewhere else without being noticed, as if by magic. Or maybe it means you can do card tricks with your feet.

noun. Being half in jest, half serious.

Our own poet has lately characterized himself as a jocoserious genius; and in fact this jocoseriosity seems of much the same quality with the eironeia of the Greek.
Browning Society Papers, E. Johnson (1885)

Comedians are well known for jocoseriosity: they’ll point out something ridiculous about our lives to make us laugh, as well as to make us think. I’m sure you speak with jocoseriosity all the time.

“Does this dress make me look fat?” she asked.
“Yeah, so huge!” he said with jocoseriosity.
He was swiftly incapacitated by a strong kick to the groinal region.

Don’t be that guy. Be jocoserious when appropriate, not on a seriosityful occasion. She wasn’t fat, just not as thin as she used to be.

Leave a comment full of jocoseriosity and jocoserious things you’ve said today!

verb. To live in a remote, rural, or provincial place.

Bankrupt scholars, whose parents had been mofussilising in an inordinate degree.
Qualk The Circumnavigator, George Augustus Sala (1863)

Here’s a word I’d never heard before. Mofussil is an Anglo-Indian word that refers to a rural part of India. Whew knew? I obviously haven’t spent enough time fossicking through my dictionaries.

My research shows that these parts of the country were so called because there was alway’s mo’ fussin’ going on. By research I mean imagination. My teachers never liked my research papers for that reason.

I have never mofussilized but I have traveled to mofussilitory areas, becoming a temporary mofussilizer. Have you traveled to or lived in a mofussil? If so, how did you survive without internet?