Last week, Webb’s Weird Words attempted an April Fools’ column consisting entirely of made-up words. No idea how many readers fell for that — but my spurious list included one whimsical monetary unit: the fictitious praq, supposedly used in the fake former Soviet republic, “Ziurtzybad.” Now if you swallowed that one, don’t feel bad; “praq”
Sometime in the next few days, TV listings and internet sites will begin to burst with Christmas-film suggestions. But before we get swept away in a flood of Scrooges, wonderful lives and Red Ryder BB guns, how about a few films for Thanksgiving? Here’s a six-course movie-meal for the upcoming holiday: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
As Webb’s “Weird Words” hits its 15th installment, here’s a personal question for vocab-loving readers: Just how many words do you think you know? For that matter, how many words does the English language actually have? Wanna take a guess before I tell you? Well, various online sources indicate the average American is familiar with
We are at No. 14 in these ongoing columns about oddball vocabulary; so here are 14 more weird words for your week. These are, incidentally, all nouns unless otherwise noted; and since most have fairly instinctive pronunciation, I left that out too, except where needed. Arsole – While it sounds indecent and is not listed
By Joseph W. Smith III Last week’s “Weird Words” marked installment No. 12; so I took those two digits as a theme and picked out several goodies from pages 1 and 2 of my ever-growing oddball vocabulary list. But I got only halfway through that selection before running out of space. Here is the other
By Joseph W. Smith III Last week, I celebrated the 10th “Weird Words” column with a selection of 10-letter terms. Having thus observed my minor milestone, this week’s installment is devoted to something without which I could never do these pieces: the English dictionary. Back in pre-internet days, when folks always needed books or libraries
