As of this week, Webb’s Weird Words has wended its way to 100 articles.

In celebration, your overworked columnist is taking a break from actual lists of oddball terms. Instead, this word-Smith figured faithful readers might enjoy an inside look at how the pieces get written — my process, as it were. And … as most of you already know:

It starts with books.

I’m well on my way to fulfilling a goal to read 1000 titles in retirement; and Lord only knows what the grand-total is since I fell in love with reading as a teen. Yet in nearly every book, I still come across strange terms that I don’t know. (And this sometimes happens with periodicals too — not to mention the occasional episode of Jeopardy!)

Upon finding something odd or unfamiliar, I look it up on my Dictionary.com app — and if it’s in there, I take a screen shot.

(You might think an internet source is not as authoritative as, for example, standard hard-copy dictionaries like Thorndyke Barnhart or Funk & Wagnalls. But by and large, Dictionary.com simply gathers its info from those earlier time-tested tomes.)

Sometimes, if the word can’t be found on the app — as with my recent entry baggywrinkle — I’ll dig for it elsewhere … just because I’m hoping it really is a word!

After a few weeks, I usually have a handful of these screenshots — so I transfer them to my master doc, which now stands at a whopping 3100 words. And since the master isn’t alphabetical, this transfer involves a quick search to make sure it isn’t already there; I added this step last year after discovering that some words were listed three or even four times. (Old man problems — ugh.)

And then, with a Wednesday deadline, I pull out the doc on Tuesday and select about a dozen words at random.

But: After I started “Weird Words” in 2023, I eventually got tired of random lists week after week; so I sometimes mix it up with themes: bird-words, boat-words, holiday words, “kangaroo words” (look it up!), pronunciation, etymology — even a list of totally made-up terms for April Fools this year. (Lzurtz and rotfluxanolol were faves — the latter coined to include two texting abbrevs. for laughter.)

It’s tough to tell how many individual words I can cover on any given week. Some entries generate so much material that I wind up with just six or seven terms in a single piece. For instance: I once did an 800-word article — my max for Webb — entirely on the word peduncle. (Let’s hope that wasn’t as boring as it sounds.)

And then, once I’ve chosen my words for the week, I line them up in alphabetical order and get to work.

First step: pronunciation — which can be tricky. (See several earlier Webb columns on this!) Fact is, English has far more sounds than letters; th and sh, for instance, don’t have their own symbols. So sticklers use the International Phonetic Alphabet, which assigns one of those for each sound (th gets the Greek theta — an “O” with a line through the middle).

Naturally, I can’t use these in my columns — the results looks like gibberish. So, once I’ve figured out proper pronunciation using more traditional renderings (Dictionary.com is reliable), I just do the best I can to spell it out. Not an exact science — but usually sufficient.

(YOU-zyuh-lee suh-FISH-ent.)

As for definitions: By now, readers know I’m an inveterate dictionary-collector (83 at this point — all different); so even though I generally turn to Dictionary.com first, I usually keep 5-10 of my faves near the laptop for reference. Top-choice is my fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, a profusely illustrated eight-pound beauty. I also like Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, Collins and the Random House College.

Unless I find a definition so clear and terse that I can quote it directly, I like to conflate several of these sources, being careful to give alternate senses where appropriate.

And I usually check the etymology — that is, the word’s origin: what language(s) it came from, along with former spellings and meanings — esp. if related to more familiar terms. (For instance, peduncle — mentioned above — is related to both uncle and the Latin base ped, meaning “foot”; but it took a very long paragraph to explain how!)

And that’s it — except for proofreading and revising, which I consider essential for any writing project (yes, even emails and texts — for you semi-literate, 21st-century cell-junkies!).

I often have a few words left over if the entries run too long; those get saved for later. And of course I then go to my master and check off all terms I used that week.

There’s enough gobbledygook in these pieces without repeating the same word twice — hear, hear!

Oops.