Bumbershoot. Zaddick. Rodomont. Diddle. Williwaw. Sklent.

These are just a few of the terms we’ve examined through three-plus years at Webb’s “Weird Words” — of which this column marks the 136th installment.

Here’s another batch, with no particular theme except that we haven’t covered them yet:

Accidie (ACK-si-dee, noun) – Alternate spelling of the more-common acedia, which means “spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui” (American Heritage). Both terms derive from the rare Greek base kedos- (meaning care or anxiety) — by adding the common negative prefix a-, as in amoral, atheist and apathy. The latter, of course, means almost the same thing as accidie, providing an excuse for this great old joke: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?

Answer: I don’t know and I don’t care.

Eupepsia (yoo-PEP-shuh — or see-ya; noun) – Eu- is a Greek base meaning “good” — as in euphoria, eulogy, euphemism and even euthanasia (literally, “good death,” ugh). Meanwhile, pep- is also a Greek building-block; somewhat less common, it usually refers to digestion — as in peptic acid and of course, Pepto-Bismol.

So it’s not hard to guess that eupepsia means “good digestion”; it serves as an antonym to the better-known and similarly derived dyspepsia.

Juba (JOO-buh, noun) – I don’t mind calling again on The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, an eight-pound behemoth that is my single favorite source — and which in this case has a terrifically detailed and helpful definition:

“A group dance, probably of West African origin, characterized by complex rhythmic clapping and body movements and practiced on plantations in the southern United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. [Origin unknown]”

Wikipedia adds that this dance was “a vital means of preserving African culture and identity under the oppressive conditions of slavery.” The site further notes that one alternate name for the juba dance is “hambone” — and that this in turn is reflected and preserved in the so-called “Bo Diddley beat”; that’s a three-two pattern similar to the famous “shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits.”

You can look up and listen to the Diddley beat online — no way to reproduce it in print! 

Pinyin (PIN-YIN, noun) – A system for transliterating written Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet (that is, our common English letters); it was adopted by the People’s Republic in 1979 (Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary). So this of course is when which older terms like Peking and Mao Tse-tung became, instead, Beijing and Mao Zedong.

Also worth noting: As far as I can make out, the proper pronunciation does actually have stress on both syllables — a rare phenomenon in English!

Therblig (THUR-blig, noun) – A basic unit of work in an industrial process, used to analyze and achieve economy of motion (Collins). According to Merriam-Webster, this seemingly Seussian word was actually coined as an anagram of American engineer Frank B. Gilbreth — an early pioneer of economical work habits.

If his name or that area of study sound familiar, it’s probably because you’ve read or seen Cheaper by the Dozen (1948 book, 1950 film). Gilbreth is the principal — and very memorable — figure in those entertaining tales.

Whiskey jack – Pronounced exactly like you’d expect, this term would normally be excluded from my running list of oddball vocab, as I avoid items consisting of more than one word (I had written it down with a hyphen — but that’s wrong). Nonetheless, I’m including whiskey jack because:

1) it’s a charming alternate name for a bird called the gray jay, a North American species best known for pilfering food from human sources like traps, picnics and even homes;

2) – I just finished photographing a bunch of these handsome animals on our visit to Alaska, where they are quite common (particularly around the outdoor café at Denali!); and …

3) whiskey jack also has an interesting origin in the Cree dialect, from which it’s transliterated as wiiskachaan; altering that, in turn, to whiskey jack occurred through a process called “folk etymology” — where an unfamiliar word is replaced by something similar and better known, yet linguistically unrelated.

Common examples would be “sparrow grass” for asparagus (which is not a type of grass); belfry, which is not linguistically related to bells; and Welsh rarebit transformed to rabbit — even though that dish contains no meat!

Hmmm. Sounds like we have a theme for our next “Weird Words.”