Seeking an appropriate new-year theme for this week’s Weird Words, I finally landed on my newest dictionary — the 13th edition of Collins, which I bought in July.
A mammoth volume offering roughly three times as many words as most standard dictionaries, it contains a ton of terms you won’t find elsewhere — partly because it draws on a staggering database of four billion words, but also because it embraces quirky English dialects like Irish, Scots and Australian.
So here are a few “weird words” from page 2024 of that volume — supplemented by several from 2023 as well.
(For the record, the 2310-page Collins exceeds most one-volume dictionaries by 600 pages; in other words, most dictionaries don’t even have a page 2024!)
Taxol (TAKS-ul, noun) – From the Pacific yew tree, this is a chemical compound used in treating cancer. Elsewhere, the term is capitalized, as it has apparently been trademarked.
Taxa (TAKS-uh, noun) – Restricted largely to biology, this is the plural for “any taxonomic group or rank.” Its singular, taxon (from “taxonomy”), was generated by an obscure but not uncommon process called back formation. In this linguistic shift, a new and usually shorter word is created by clipping the suffix off an existing term — as in, for example, laze from lazy; emote from emotion; and curate from curator. In other words, the shorter word did not give rise to the longer in the usual fashion (i.e., advise to advisor), but rather vice versa.
One other notable instance of this is our word pea, which was “back-formed” from the now-unfamiliar pease pudding or pease porridge.
Tay (noun) – Irish dialect for tea. (As in: “Let’s ’ave a cuppa tay, me boy.”)
Tayassuid (TAY-uh-sweed, noun) – Another name for the equally weird-sounding beast called a peccary — a bristly, piglike animal of the Americas. (The more familiar Tayassuidae is the family-name for this “New World pig.”)
Tayra (TAY-ruh, noun) – “A large arboreal musteline mammal of Central and South America, having a dark brown body and paler head.”
Tazza (TAZZ-uh, noun) – “A wine cup with a shallow bowl and a circular foot.”
Tchick (CHICK, noun) – Popping sound made by pressing your tongue against the hard palate (just behind your teeth) and then suddenly breaking the seal.
Tchotchke (CHOTCH-kuh, noun) – A cheap souvenir, ornament or trinket. I actually used this in an earlier column, but don’t mind re-including it here; such a great word!
Tchoukball (CHOOK-ball, noun) – Invented in Switzerland, tchoukball is an indoor team sport in which players attempt to bounce a ball off a small, springy, upright frame in such a way that opposing players cannot catch it. It was named onomatopoetically — for the sound the ball makes when striking the so-called “rebounder.”
Te (TEE, noun) – Alternate spelling for ti, the seventh note of a standard gamut (as in, fa-so-la-ti-da). “Gamut,” incidentally, has several meanings, but it originally referred to a set of “do-re-mi”-type words designed for singing practice. It is a contraction of gamma and ut, lowest and highest notes in Medieval Latin. And yes, that’s where we get our expression run the gamut (meaning to display or achieve the full range of something).
Teagle (TEE-gull) – Now obsolete term, this refers to a hoist used for moving goods in a warehouse. Also: a verb for doing this.
Teapoy (TEE-poy, noun) – A small table or “tea caddy” with a triangular base. Its origin is not in the word tea, but rather in a Sanskrit term meaning “three feet.”
Teasel (TEE-zul, noun) – Alternately spelled teazel or teazle, this one is bit complicated — and a bit interesting, too: Teasel was originally a plant with yellow or purple flowers and prickly heads. In olden times, these burr-like tops were used in to “tease” — that is, to pull apart and separate — fibers like wool and flax. Once machines were invented to do that, they were also called teasles.
And yes, this is related to our more common sense of “tease” — as in picking apart (i.e., pulling at, vexing, annoying) a fellow human being.
So here’s to a 2024 with less teasing — and more tay!
