The word thesaurus, believe it or not, is closely related to treasure. (They are in fact “doublets,” a term you can search at Webb if you want more info.)
This pairing should delight all word-lovers, who might also wish for a similar connection with dictionary. And maybe also to James V. Brown Library.
The “Friends” of that august institution run a twice-annual book sale, where one can walk off with a whole bag of lightly used reads for under $20.
But at their recent fall book-bash, I managed to fit only 10 in my bag — because three were colossal hardcover dictionaries.
As you may have guessed, “not enough room for books” is an ongoing problem in my life — typified by my dictionary shelf, which now holds 73 different volumes.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but my personal “go-to” is a 1969 inaugural edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
At this Friends’ sale, I grabbed a copy of the AHD’s magisterial fourth edition, from the year 2000. Loaded with color illustrations — and fully 523 pages longer than its forbear — this true treasure-trove is a book that would cost more than $30 online.
In honor of this “newest favorite,” Webb’s Weird Words herewith presents a selection of oddball vocab from pages 1013-1019 (basically the dates of this current week):
Lignify (LIG-ni-fie, verb) – Ligni-, a Latin base meaning wood, gives us this word meaning “to turn into wood or become woody.” The root has also generated various other unusual words, including ligneous, lignin, lignum vitae and the mouthful lignocellulose.
Ligula (LIG-yuh-luh, noun) – A tongue-like structure in the mouth of some insects. Though it somehow lost the N, this is related to such language-terms as linguistic, lingua franca, bilingual — and yes, even language.
The base originally meant tongue.
Limicolous (lie-MICK-uh-luss, adj.) – “Living in mud.” What a word! Hoping this is not used primarily for humans, I was happy that AHD noted its close relation to limicoline — which describes such shore birds as plovers, sandpipers and phalaropes (another great “weird word”).
Limpkin (LIMP-kin, noun) – Indeed, if you’ve been reading Weird Words for any length of time, you know that a surprisingly large proportion of these refer to birds — like this, a wading bird with “long legs, a drooping bill, and a distinctive wailing call.” The name is not related to the above “lim”-words, but rather to this creature’s awkward gait.
Limulus (LIM-yuh-luss, noun) – Synonym for a horseshoe crab. From the Latin limulus, meaning sidelong — again, a name applied because of the animal’s movement.
Linalool (li-NA-low-all — with the A-sound of pat; noun) – Watch that pronunciation, folks; it’s only spelled with a “LOOL,” not spoken that way — and if you say it right, you can easily guess it’s a chemical compound. A “colorless, fragrant liquid” used in perfumes, linalool is taken from rosewood, bergamot and other plants.
Linsey-woolsey (lin-zee-WOOL-zee, noun) – Webb’s Weird Words covered this months ago, in a column on odd-sounding hyphenated terms; but it’s a great one, and I don’t mind including it again. AHD has it as “a coarse, woven fabric of wool and cotton or of wool and linen.” As you can tell, the term itself comes from its constituents.
Linguaphile (LING-gwuh-file, noun) – Slightly out of alphabetical order here, but I just had to put this last, since it’s so germane to our topic. Meaning “a lover of languages and words,” it is composed of the Latin base ling- (discussed above) and the more common phil-, meaning love — as in philanthropy (love of mankind), philosophy (love of wisdom) and of course, that city of brotherly love, Philadelphia.
These pages of the AHD also contain no less than 15 illustrations, including many plants & animals (lion, lilac, linden, limpet, lionfish and lily of the valley) — along with pictures and brief bios of such historical figures as Charles and Anne Lindbergh, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and the tough-to-pronounce Liliuokalani, last native ruler of Hawaii. There’s even a photo of someone doing the limbo — which, let’s face it, is hard to picture from a verbal definition alone.
The AHD also offers various linguistic commentary throughout; on pp. 1013-19, these include noting Americans’ preference for lightning bug over the more formally correct firefly; a distinction of synonyms for limit and limp; and an extended note on the now-wildly-uncontrolled like — in particular, how (along with “go”) it has somehow come to replace the word “said”:
So she goes, “Isn’t he finished with this column yet?”
And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s all there is to it. So let’s not, like, get all carried away or something.”
And don’t even get me started on “literally”….
