If you didn’t already know the word teetotaler, you certainly wouldn’t assume it meant a complete abstainer from alcohol — would you?

To me, it sounds like a guy on a golf course, with a crumpled scorecard and a stubby little pencil — though I might add that no one knows just where this particular term originated. (There seems to be some evidence for coinage by a temperance speaker — and somehow, for adding an emphatic third “T” to total.)

In any case, here at Webb’s Weird Words, teetotaler is among a group we’ve been calling “words in disguise” — indicating that they don’t mean what we think.

We’ve covered a baker’s dozen of these in the past two weeks, focusing just now on plants and animals.

Here are more:

Eyebright – Per dictionary.com, this happy-sounding word can refer to one of two plants: a pimpernel, having red or white petals that close for bad weather; or a flower in the figwort family — one that has (according to Wikipedia) about 215 different species.

(Figwort — yet another somewhat misleading term!)

When I learned that eyebright referred to a flower, I assumed it had to do with the species’ appearance. After all, our more common word daisy originated as a shortening of day’s eye (no, I am not making this up). But actually, eyebright has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy for certain ocular diseases.

Godwit – One of several species of shorebirds related to curlews and sandpipers, and having a long slender bill (Merriam-Webster). This is, incidentally, another word of unknown etymology.

Grassquit – This term might well describe how I feel about cutting the lawn when it’s 85 degrees outside; but actually, grassquit is another bird-word — a tanager-family finch found in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America. (“Quit” in this case is not a verb, but rather a noun for various species of small tropical birds.)

Kittiwake – Nope, not related to baby cats — or to coming out of sleep. It is in fact yet one more type of flying feathered friend: “either of two oceanic gulls … having a white plumage with pale gray, black-tipped wings and a square-cut tail. Also called: hacklet.” (This wonderfully precise definition is from my beloved Collins English Dictionary.) The word itself is “imitative,” meaning it mimics the sounds of this bird’s cry — kind of like our better-known killdeer.

Klipspringer – I guess killdeer might also fall under “words in disguise,” since it has nothing to do with either killing or deer. So by now, you might be starting to assume that any weird and unknown word has about a 50% chance of referring to birds!

But the klipspringer, despite sounding like a small piece of office equipment, is actually an African antelope — one that inhabits rocky regions south of the Sahara (again from Collins). It is named, as you may have guessed, from its springing movement — and from a Dutch word for cliff.

Mossbunker – Frankly, I’m not sure what we might’ve assumed about this one — but I don’t think it would have included fish!

This is actually another term for menhaden, a shad-like species of the coastal U.S. that is used to make oil and fertilizer (from the terrific Random House College Dictionary). The word is an Americanization of another Dutch term, marsbanker. I could not track down what that original word actually meant — though I can’t help picturing a fish “bunking down” amid underwater moss.

I don’t know; is there moss underwater? I’m admittedly out of my depth here. (Sorry — couldn’t resist.)

Pennyroyal – With the time-tested penchant for placing government leaders on our money, this word sounds like a coin, does it not? But in fact, it is another plant — one of two, actually: a Eurasian species “having hairy leaves a small lilac-blue flowers”; or a similar aromatic plant of North America (from my go-to American Heritage Dictionary).

There’s another plant species called pennywort, which is also known as navelwort. I don’t know about you, but for me, navelwort conjures up a rather distressing mental image.

Thank God it’s just a flower.