British scholar Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first English dictionary way back in 1755, defines lexicographer as: “A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”
I guess your “Weird Words” writer kinda fits into that category — though I’ve certainly never written an entire volume (which, incidentally, Johnson did pretty much alone — without the help of existing dictionaries!).
While I’m not so sure about the “harmless” part, there is a certain amount of “drudge-work” here — partly in consulting a variety of sources, but mostly in trying to select weekly batches from my oddball list of 2600-plus words.
Happily, during Little League week I had help from two young friends: Eight- and nine-year-old Cora and Alanna, who were visiting with family for LLWS, eagerly agreed to pick 16 from my list.
We covered half of those last week; here are the rest:
Hau (HOW, noun) – While this is not found in a lot of dictionaries, the authoritative and reliable merriam-webster.com has it as a synonym for majagua (or mahagua) — a tropical tree of the hibiscus family, whose wood is used in boating and ornamentation.
Izzard (IZZ-urd, noun) – Chiefly British slang for the letter Z; a variant of zed. (Don’t ask me — I don’t make this stuff up; I’m just the messenger!)
Jacquard (JACK-urd, or juh-KARD, noun) – A type of fabric which the useful Collins English Dictionary explains thus: “the design is incorporated into the weave instead of being printed or dyed on.” (And we all know how much cooler that is!) The stuff is named for French inventor J. M. Jacquard — and thus this term is sometimes capitalized. French pronunciation: zhyuh-CAR.
Myxomatosis (miks-uh-muh-TOE-sis, noun) – For this mouthful, dictionary.com offers one of those annoying definitions that requires you to look up other words: “a condition characterized by the presence of many myxomas”; or alternately, “a myxomatous degeneration” (talk about a mouthful!). From that same source: a myxoma is a “soft tumor composed of connective and mucoid tissue.”
Secondarily, myxomatosis is also a highly contagious rabbit disease that was deliberately spread in Britain and Australia to reduce that animal’s population.
Oogonium (oh-uh-GO-nee-um, noun) – From Merriam-Webster: “a female sexual organ in various algae and fungi that corresponds to the archegonium of ferns and mosses.” Wait … algae and moss have sex organs? Who knew!?
Plural, oogonia; adjective, oogonial. (Just in case you ever need to describe the reproductive life of fungi and ferns.)
Phainopepla (fay-eye-no-PEP-la, noun) – According to Wikipedia, this is a crested bird in the flycatcher family; its tough-to-say moniker is from the Greek for “shiny” — relating to the male’s gleaming plumage.
The Greek base pha(i)n, in the sense of “bringing to light,” has given us such words as phantom, fantasy and epiphany, among many others.
Rechauffe (ray-show-FAY, adj.) – From my beloved American Heritage Dictionary: “1. Warmed leftover food. 2. Old material reworked or rehashed.” Using the common Latin prefix re- (“back, again”) and a French form of chafe (“to rub”), it literally means … reheated.
Sabra (SAH-bruh, noun) – A native of Israel (from the excellent Random House College Dictionary). Foodies will recognize this as a particularly tasty brand of hummus (though Wegmans gives that label a run for its money). The hummus connection is natural, of course — since this foodstuff originated in the Middle East … like a sabra.
Silviculture (SIL-vi-kull-cher, noun) – Related to agriculture — also using the Latin base silvi- (“woodland”) — this means “forestry,” or the cultivation of trees.
Slightly respelled with a “y,” the silvi- base occurs in the name of our heavily wooded state: Pennsylvania. Drive west on I-80 and you’ll see why.
For any dear readers who’d like to help this “harmless drudge” by suggesting a theme for future word-choices: Drop me a line at robbwhitefan@gmail.com.
