Some time ago, I came upon the term hab-dabs in my reading — a perfect candidate for these “weird word” columns.

When that happens, I look the word up to make sure it’s official, then add it to my ever-growing list — which currently stands at 2,923.

Then this week, when I glanced over that colossal doc to select a handful for our latest installment, I could not find hab-dabs at either dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster online.

The latter source told me, “The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary,” suggesting instead a host of similar terms in case I’d misspelled my entry: haba, haboob, habnab, habdalah and ardab (or ardeb). So those went on my list as well!

Happily, “AI Overview” tells us habdabs (without the hyphen) is British slang for “a state of extreme nervousness of anxiety” — like the ever-popular heebie-jeebies. And seeing that it’s British, I knew I’d also find it in my exhaustive Collins English Dictionary — which says, “a highly nervous state.” (The venerable British Collins not only embraces much slang from the United Kingdom, but also includes over 723,000 entries — roughly three times the number in your standard hardcover dictionary.)

AI likewise pointed out that habdabs can be spelled abdabs (as in “the screaming abdabs”); and when I typed that in at Merriam-Webster, it again got rejected, with further references to other possibilities: gabgab, lablab, abwab and abjab (another term for njave).

OK, so now my list stands at 2,932.

And I also have, as it turns out, a nice selection for this week’s column. We’ll lean heavily on Merriam-Webster’s definitions, since that site was kind enough to suggest all these:

Abwab (AB-wab, noun) – Hindi & Arabic term for a fine imposed on a subject landowner by a native chief.

Ardab (AR-deb, noun) – A Middle Eastern unit of dry measure, varying in size depending on the country; in Egypt, it’s 198 liters (American Heritage).

Gabgab (GAB-gab, noun) – Another name for the coral tree, a small thorny tree found in Asia and Australia. Often having colorful red flowers and seeds, it is cultivated for ornamentation.

Haba (HAH-buh, noun) – From Spanish, this is another name for the broad bean or fava bean (the latter, of course, made famous in Silence of the Lambs; no idea how they taste with Chianti).

Habdallah – Not sure on the pronunciation of this one; it’s a less common form of havdalah (hahv-duh-LAH), which MW defines as “a Jewish ceremony marking the close of a Sabbath or holy day.” Collins lists the alternate spelling havdolah — these variants, of course, being due to the fact that Hebrew does not use the same letter-system as English.

Habnab (HAB-nab, adverb) – We don’t get many adverbs in these columns! This is another British slang term meaning “in one way or another” (like the more common “by hook or by crook”). It may be an adaptation of Middle English for “have/not have.”

Haboob (huh-BOOB, noun) – “A thick dust storm or sandstorm that blows in the deserts of North Africa and Arabia or on the plains of India” (dictionary.com).

Lablab (LAB-lab, noun) – My eye wants my brain to pronounce this la BLAB — which sounds like a French girl who talks too much. But actually, it’s another term for the hyacinth bean, a large tropical flowering vine; its pods are sometimes used for food (most often fodder).

Njave (NYAH-vuh, noun) – Also spelled djave (and alternately called adjab), this is, according to MW, “a very large tropical African tree (Mimusops njave) that has a termite-resistant wood somewhat resembling mahogany, a slightly acid edible fruit, and a seed rich in a fat that resembles shea butter.”

So then I had to look up shea butter as well. That’s a plant-derived fat (from the shea tree, of course) used in food, soap and candles.

Now we really are at the bottom of the rabbit-hole — I think. Thanks for following me — and sorry there’s so many weird plants down here.

Now let’s hack our way out back to daylight, and I’ll see you here next week for some terms that are, hopefully, a bit less likely to give us the habdabs.