“What do you read, my lord?” asks the fawning and foolish Polonius in Act II of Hamlet.

To which the troubled young prince replies: “Words, words, words.”

* Sigh *

That pretty much describes my life these days: reading and words — lots of them.

As my ongoing 20-year list of oddball vocab nears 3,000 terms, I remain amazed to keep coming upon new outliers in books, newspapers and magazines.

Here’s another sample:

Couturier (koo-TOOR-ee-ur; or koo-TOOR-ee-yay; or koo-tur-YAY; noun) – Adapted from French — hence the multiple pronunciations — this is a person or establishment that designs, makes and/or sells high-end women’s clothing. It derives from couture (koo-TOOR), a general term for that business.

I realize this is a fairly common word, but I didn’t know it — possibly because I’m not a “women” … but more likely due to years of disinterest in decent clothing. After all, I did win “worst-dressed” as a high-school senior — and believe me: in 1978, it was possible to dress very badly indeed.

Pictures withheld because … well, I’d like to claim “all rights reserved”; but now that I’ve learned to actually care about color and quality, let’s just say, “all wrongs reversed.”

Gorblimey (gor-BLYE-mee, interjection) – As a fan of British culture, I’d heard this variant of the better-known “blimey” — but assumed it was too slangy to be found in good dictionaries; however, the venerable Merriam-Webster says the interjection is “used to express amazement, surprise or perplexity.” Believe it or not, the term is a phonetic shortening of “God blind me.”

Porcine (por-SYNE, adj.) – “Connected with or characteristic of pigs” (Collins).

Yes of course — it’s related to pork. But more important, porcine joins a small yet delightful cadre of other beastly adjectives: bovine (cows), canine (dogs), caprine and hircine (goats), cervine (deer), equine (horses), feline (cats), ovine (sheep), murine (mice and rats) and ursine (bears).

These are known as “collateral adjectives,” not being derived directly from the more familiar noun. In many cases (as above), they descend from Latin or Greek — like the common collaterals solar and lunar; others (like first and second) trace a more circuitous etymology.

Lots more can be perused under “English collateral adjectives” at Wiktionary.

Schmatte (SHMAH-tuh, noun) – Donated to our language by Yiddish, this is either a rag or “an old ragged garment” (American Heritage).

I stumbled upon this while trying to decipher a similar British slang-term in John Mortimer’s novel Paradise Postponed — a paperback I pulled from the free-book kiosk at Cedar Run on the Pine Creek Rail Trail. Never having read anything by this author — best known for his “Rumpole of the Bailey” series — I must say, I haven’t enjoyed a novel this much in a very long time.

Woadwaxen (WODE-wax-en, noun) – My book-group is reading Natasha Boyd’s historical novel The Indigo Girl, about attempts in Colonial America to grow plants which yield that color. So from Boyd’s text, I looked up woad — a plant which does indeed produce a deep blue — and came upon this other shrub, “whose flowers yield a yellow dye formerly used with woad to make a permanent green dye” (Dictionary.com). The word is composed of a variant for “wood” and the verb “wax,” meaning to grow — as in “waxing and waning.”

And I have to confess, I can never use “waning” without hearing Elmer Fudd talk about precipitation.

Or, if you want a more porcine final thought: “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!”