Enantiodromia means the tendency of things to turn into their opposite. It is one of my favorite words because it is so useful. For example:

A government established to protect freedom will tend to become a government that rules by slavery.
An anti-drug policy will tend to increase the use of drugs.

Both of these are examples of enantiodromia in action.

Otiose means "serving no practical purpose". I ran into this word in a computer science article where the author casually dropped it into the flow, causing me to go "iuh?!"

Etymology:
Otiosus is Latin for idle.
Otium is Latin for leisure.

Callipygian is a Greek word which historically was first used to describe this statue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo

Etymology (Greek):
kallos = beautiful
puge = butt

A tiger team is a group of highly trained commando types that try to break the security of a secure installation, in order to stress test the security.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_team

Scott Adams made fun of management's prediliction to inappropriately use terms by doing some Dilbert strips in which the boss started rambling about "Tiger Teams" but in inappropriate context.

Today's STS-121 shuttle launch brought this subject to mind as they were referring to the "External Tank Tiger Team", which is a group of engineers who are charged with designing a safer system in which foam doesn't fall off the space shuttle at bad times during launch. Here's references to the ET tiger team:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2005/10/executive_summa.html
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_space_story.jsp?id=news/JUL06206.xml

Arg! Use the term correctly! A External Tank Tiger Team would be a team that is launching the shuttle in the middle of a freezing rainstorm, to see if a new foam design falls off under these conditions. It's not the right term for the guys actually trying to improve the design, it's for the people who try to break the design.

Hierophantic means pertaining to hierophants, the revealers of sacred mysteries.

Found this word on this page about a famous organic farm in Tennessee and the procreative practices of its members:

"While sexual and marital practices provided only imperfect and sometimes grudging support for The Farm's vision of an ideal alternative lifestyle, the ultimate sustenance of communal life was the queen of the sacral trinity-natural childbirth. Birthing claimed central importance as a physical, emotional, and spiritual ritual at the heart of community life. It was a communal rite of renewal that recreated and redirected the energies of the dyadic unit and reforged its bonds to the whole. The spiritual midwives who guided the couple through the birth had both a hierophantic and an educative role. They stood in place of the entire community at the birthing, because only the parents and the midwives were present during childbirth. While training the couple to achieve higher levels of intimacy and a deeper sharing of their experience, they reasserted the primacy of the community over the dyadic unit. The sanctification of the couple occurred in its reabsorption into the communal energy field. Through the transcendent, telepathic sensitivity of the process of natural childbirth, communal commitment was recreated, and the couple's consciousness was anchored in the community through the support system provided by the midwife network."

– www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/kerntext.html

I think it is true in general that midwives are hierophants and not just at The Farm.

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

Or as many of you are probably more familiar with this proverb: "Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?"

Wood chuck is an anglosization of the Algonquian word for this North American native animal, the original word of which is lost.

The animal is legendary: Bill Murray spent a life time on the day dedicated to this animal and its uncanny ability to predict the onset of spring.

In Appalachia, we of course use the correct term for the animal, which is whistle pig.

Euphemism alert:

Rather than fix potholes, the good fellows of the Tameside council, in consultation with engineers with many years of advanced training, have determined that it will be less bother to redefine them instead.

Henceforth, holes in the road will be appellated a 'traffic calming measure'. This is self-evidently highly beneficial to society, and also reduces the risk of injury to small children running after errant basketballs:

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/s/206/206521_potholes_are_traffic_calming_measure.html