I suspect that coming across a new word in a parser-based game is memorable because learning what the word means is often crucial for completing the game! It forces you to go and look it up. Also, with the Scott Adams games being quite terse, a new word will tend to stand out.
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Eat Me taught me a lot of new words. I didn’t even know what devil’s food or angel’s food cakes were, much less many of the rest of the words in the game…
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Dumbwaiter is definitely “the count”. Made me want to investigate them irl and whether it’s really possible to get into one.
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We had one in our hall of residence at college. It was possible for someone to get inside, but they couldn’t winch themselves up and down from inside like you can in The Count. You had to rely on somebody else to do it, which led to the inevitable possibility that someone would deliberately leave you stranded between floors as a joke. Consequently I never tried it.
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…not due to concern that a device constructed to lift plates of food might not be able to support a human being? 
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Ah yes, the guano.
I also remember my first introduction to the Greek epic poem “odyssey”. Calling out the heroes name was an alternate solution to the cyclops puzzle. Of course I didn’t know about that until I read it in the invisiclues, and had to ask around why that solution would make logical sense to anyone.
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I learned what an analgesic is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Game… I think that is the only general word I’ve learned from IF… of course, there’s also Grue from Zork, but as far as I know, Grues are fantasy creatures native to Zork, and I’m not sure I can count it as while I played Zork as a preteen in the late 90s or a teen in the early 00s, I read Worm by WildBow before I got back into IF as a blind player and didn’t realize that the darkness generating supervillain Grue was a reference to the darkness dwelling creatures.
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They were rather short episodes but wonderfully off-the-wall. I remember loving the intro and the music but I can well imagine it becoming grating on repeat viewing.
This reminds me: there is a Danger Mouse text adventure! I’ve never played it, but from the screen shot it appears to be an early choice-based game 
Has anyone played it?
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Yes, this reminds me that Zork had a heavy influence for me too: the guano, yes, even the gazebo, the topiary, I remember looking them up. And as for the analgesic… I’m not convinced I’ve heard it used since! (Except in the context of discussing the game…)
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I believe Pirate Adventure by Scott & Alexis Adams was the first place I saw “flotsam and jetsam” in print. I think I’d heard the term before, although I can’t think of where or why.
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I can’t think of what words I’ve learned from playing IF, but participating in IF discussions online was definitely where I learned the words “diegetic” and “mimesis”.
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Mimesis is an actual word?! I thought it was a coined term in the IF community…
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I needed a break last night, so I fired this up (ZX version). It’s actually very charming and sympathetic to the licence, with lovely incidental graphics throughout. It’s also a good example of how to make a choice game with some level of puzzling in it. Though that could be a little frustrating if you just want to blast through the story.
I note that @aschultz has written an excellent review of it (C64 version) on IFDB, if you are interested.
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Don’t tempt me into actually put in motion my menace of actually writing a Naval-themed IF: bad english coupled with pure & unadultered “Navalese”: the perfect recipe for an IF good only for learning the infamous Naval jargon 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio
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This one was constructed to lift laundry, but yes, that too!
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I learned those words from the same game (called Pirate’s Cove on the C64).
I also learned that a flat is a kind of apartment from it.
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It’s definitely a word; the OED mentions attestations dating to the 1500s. But I think the usage with regards to IF is not necessarily aligned with how it’s used elsewhere.
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XYZZY.
Oh yes, and PLOVER, also from ADVENT.
I can’t remember any words I’ve learned from IF, but I do remember where I first came across “flotsam and jetsam,” which was book three, chapter nine of Lord of the Rings.
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I think it comes over to IF from literary criticism and classical studies, as there are several people with that sort of bent in IF history. IIRC it’s used there to mean representing the real world in art (“mimesis,” same root as “mime”)… and goes back to Plato and Aristotle?
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