August 4, 1996 NEW YORK TIMES Naming Names By CHARLES HARRINGTON ELSTER He thinks that everything he says is brilliant, that he's always right, and you think: "There must be a name for this guy." There is. The fellow is a philodox, someone in love with his or her own opinions. The world is teeming with people we can describe but don't know what to call. For example, did you know that a person who detests tobacco smoke is a misocapnist, that someone who sees an omen in every event is a pantomancer, that someone who claims to prevent or cure baldness is an alopecist, and that a person afraid of riding the subway is a bathysiderodromophobe? (That redoubtable word is formed from the Greek bathy, deep; sidero, iron; dromo, a course or track; and -phobe, one who fears.) The English language abounds with useful terms for folks of every stripe. There's a word for a devotee of crossword puzzles (cruciverbalist), for a thief who preys on theatergoers (efter), and for someone who picks up stray balls during a tennis match (nacket). There's a word for a person who never laughs (agelast) and for a person who mocks God (theomicrist). There's even a word for someone who imitates animals: theriomime. And would you believe that a crawk is a theriomime who does his thing on the radio? Not surprisingly, there are at least five words for foolish, meddling gossips (quidnunc, numquid, polypragmon, yenta, from Yiddish, and badaud, from French) and no fewer than 10 words for what the politically correct might call "the calorically challenged": tenterbelly, gorbelly, gundygut, greedygut, gormandizer, swillbelly, bellygod, pangut(s), porknell, and, my personal favorite, fustilugs. Our verbivoracious, omniloquent tongue has a term for almost every sort of person imaginable, including someone with a penchant for polysyllabic phrases like "our verbivoracious, omniloquent tongue." Though I would prefer to be dubbed an aristophren, someone of superior intelligence, or a bel-esprit, a person of refined intellect and graceful wit, the proper term for me is lexiphanes (lek-SIF-uh-neez), a showoff with words. This lofty locution hails from the Greek lexis, speech, and phainein, to show, the source also of lexiphanicism, verbal ostentation. Some of the most interesting, and most obscure, people terms have dialectal or colloquial roots. My favorite is stalko (from Anglo-Irish dialect), which the exquisitely genteel Webster's New International Dictionary, second edition, defines as "an impecunious idler posing as a gentleman." A number of people terms come from professional or technical jargon, like that loudmouthed crawk (from 1930s radio slang) and timbromaniac, the original name for a stamp collector, which quickly got licked by philatelist. Another amusing word of this ilk is gork, medical slang for a person with unknown ailments, an acronymic appellation formed from "God only really knows." As you might imagine, many people terms are simply nonce words or joculisms proffered by earlier generations of wits and witlings (people who think they're funny but aren't). In 1903, G.B. Shaw proposed hominist for someone who advocates equal rights for men; it was an unhappy bedfellow for feminist, which appeared about 1894. In his preface to "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" (1930), Christopher Morley minted infracaninophile for a champion of the underdog. Ten years later, H.L. Mencken -- inspired by the zoological term ecdysis, the shedding of a layer of skin -- invented ecdysiast, a euphemism for stripper. Mencken also came up with bibliobibuli for "people who read too much." I leave it to you to speculate on why the former word readily outstripped the latter. Jack Hitt's entertaining collection of neologisms "In a Word" (Dell Laurel, 1992) contains a number of clever people terms: an eccedentesiast (coined by Florence King) is a person who fakes a smile; an autotonsorialist (coined by Christopher Corbett) is a person who looks as if he cuts his own hair; a monomath (coined by L.J. Davis) is someone who knows everything about one thing and nothing about anything else, and a fashimite (coined by Michael Lockwood) is a slave to fashion. Only time can tell if a word will last, like ecdysiast, or lapse into obscurity, like anonymuncule, a petty anonymous writer, and criticaster, a third-rate, mean-spirited, contemptible critic (a word well worth reviving). Meanwhile, to help you stock the shelves in your warehouse of words for hoi polloi, allow me to introduce you to a few more handy terms for familiar folks. Have you ever been the victim of a macrologist? That's the infernally dull conversationalist you get stuck with at a party and must evade by deftly passing on to someone else. Macrologist is the offspring of macrology, which the Century Dictionary defines as "prolonged discourse, with little or nothing to say." The opposite of this dullard is the deipnosophist, an adept dinner conversationalist. Have you been searching for the counterpart to misogynist? It's time to meet misandrist, the man-hater (not to be confused with misanthrope, one who dislikes all people). Do you know anyone obsessed with making money by hook or by crook? That do-or-die dollar-chaser is a quomodocunquizer (from the Latin quomodocunque, "in whatever way"). Know a compulsive consumer, a shop-till-you-dropper? That poor spent soul is an oniomaniac. Does your neighbor have an annoying habit of dropping in uninvited at mealtimes? Call the lip-smacking moocher a smellfeast or a lickdish, venerable epithets the Oxford English Dictionary traces back to 1519 and 1440, respectively. Have you been to the beach this summer, or at least caught an episode of "Baywatch"? If so, chances are you saw a scantily clad army of heliolaters, worshipers of the sun. I could go on until the sun goes down, but I'm afraid my time is up. (Does that mean I'm a chronophobe, one who dreads the passing of time?) I shall leave you with a final word: ipsedixitist. Conceived circa 1832 by Jeremy Bentham from the Latin ipse dixit, "he himself said it," ipsedixitist means a person given to dogmatic assertions. Now there's a locution any logogogue (language dictator) can love. Copyright 1996 The New York Times