embuggerance

He called it the "embuggerance" and actually continued to write with some effort.

He has then made a point of talking often and candidly about dealing with this "embuggerance" and last year donated £500,000 to the cause.

It didn't matter for them: the course was just a three-week embuggerance, and then they'd go home for tea and medals.

The author, who has sold more than 55 million books around the world, delivered the news online in typical Pratchett style, calling the incurable brain disease "an embuggerance".

However, in July 2014 he cancelled his appearance at the biennial International Discworld Convention, saying: "the Embuggerance is finally catching up with me, along with other age-related ailments".

Describing the diagnosis as an "embuggerance" in a radio interview, Pratchett appealed to people to "keep things cheerful" and proclaimed that "we are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism."

We were sleeping with most of our kit on anyway, but it was a major embuggerance to have to pull on your boots, flak jacket, and helmet and leg it down to the slit trenches.

Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld fantasy novels, was diagnosed two years ago with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease – a discovery he memorably described, when he broke the news on the Discworld News website, as "an embuggerance".

Embuggerance was submitted not by Pratchett – for whom it describes the exasperating obstacle presented by his Alzheimer’s disease – but by a man who said he had invented it to describe his frustrations while working for the Ministry of Defence during the Falklands conflict in 1982.