Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
JACTITATION
If you are haunted by late-night television commercials about "restless leg syndrome," you might find it handy to have the use of the word
jactitation
(or its alternative
jactation
) to describe the restless tossing of the body or the twitching of a limb or muscle.
The word, pronounced jak-tuh-TAY-shun, comes from the Latin verb
jactare
, "to throw." In jactitation, your limbs are thrown about without your volition.
There is a specialized legal meaning of the word as well growing out of a sense of a boastful public declaration — to "throw out" a statement.
Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage
says that it narrowly meant to make of false declaration of marriage to someone but has since taken on broader usage.
Example:
She's also prone to hypnagogic jactitation, which means she twitches abruptly as she's falling asleep.