Lost Word Of The Day (17)

As with all prejudices, heightism is something to avoid. However, in descriptive prose it is sometimes necessary to describe the height of something. For the imaginative writer the rather prosaic “short” does not really cut it. An alternative, used in the mid-17th century but quickly falling into obscurity, is improcerous. Its origin is straight from the Latin lexicon, the prefix im- indicating a negative and procerus being an adjective meaning tall or long.

Perhaps it is due a renaissance.