In recent weeks at Webb’s “Weird Words,” we’ve bounced around from good dictionaries to newly coined words to vocab from the Caribbean — the latter inspired by a recent vacation in St. Croix.
This week, I tried to get back to an ordinary selection of oddball terms from my sprawling master-list; but I wound up sticking mostly with new finds from Willa Cather’s prairie novel My Antonia (1918) — which I just finished with my book group.
So here’s this week’s somewhat mismatched batch:
Arnica (ARR-ni-kuh, noun) – Older readers may recognize this as a once-standard homeopathic treatment for bruises; more broadly, however, arnica is a perennial in the sunflower family. (It’s “asteraceous,” says Random House Collegiate — handily giving us another weird word!) The medicine, of course, was extracted from that plant.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia points out that the word itself may derive from the Greek arni, meaning “lamb” — since the plant has “soft, hairy leaves”; the same source tells us it is also nicknamed “leopard’s bane,” “wolfsbane” and “mountain tobacco.”
Capote (kuh-POAT, noun) – Nope — this is not the well-known American author (In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s); that name, as most know, is pronounced kuh-POE-tee.
Related instead to cape, this is actually a long hooded cloak or overcoat (Merriam-Webster). Dictionary.com adds that it can be an old-fashioned cap or bonnet; a bullfighter’s cape; or even the adjustable top on a vehicle.
Crevalle (kruh-VAL-ee — or VAL-uh [middle syllable like pal]; noun) – A spiny-finned ocean fish related to the pompano. Merriam-Webster did us a favor this week: Not only did their entry provide another weird word — carangid — but it also sent me down a rabbit-hole (fish-hole?), since I had to look up that fish-family, too; it includes the crevalle, as well as jacks, trevallies and scads — all new to me!
Manchineel (man-kuh-NEEL, noun) – Since we’re still talking about tropical species — as we did in last week’s piece on St. Croix — I’ll herewith make up for an oversight in that most recent article: The manchineel is a somewhat infamous tree or shrub common in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. Also nicknamed “the tree of death,” it bears leaves and fruit that can cause nasty blisters, temporary blindness and, if ingested, severe gastric distress — perhaps even death.
In fact, our St. Croix tour-boat captain told us that in pirate days, manchineel leaves were used for torture — and that even rain running off the bush can cause painful burns and blisters. Later, one of our daily rambles was cut short when we found manchineels crowding in too tightly on our intended route.
Stingaree (STING-uh-ree, noun) – Might as well throw in another Caribbean-related word while we’re at it: Stingaree is an alternate, more colloquial name for the stingray.
Now let’s conclude with a few more from Cather (with apologies for disrupting alphabetical order to finish off the tropics):
Fixy (FICK-see, adj.) – Slang term — probably Scottish — for fussy, particular or elegant. A rare word that I could find only in M-W — though the exhaustive Collins has the similar fike or fiky, which can also mean “restless.”
Quinsy (KWIN-zee, noun) – “A severe inflammation of the throat near a tonsil that sometimes leads to the formation of an abscess that may require surgery” (Microsoft Encarta).
Schottische (SHOT-ish, noun) – A round dance in 2/4 time — or the music that accompanies this (American Heritage). (A “round dance” is one where participants move in a circle.)
Withe (WITH, noun) – An older word which, again, was not listed in many of my dictionaries. Funk & Wagnalls has “a willowy, supple twig” — or one of those used as a band, as in basket-weaving. Also spelled withy.
Well, I guess I couldn’t make up my mind this week whether we were in the plains of Nebraska or the balmy Caribbean. If you’d like us to settle down with something more consistent, send along suggestions for future themes: robbwhitefan@gmail.com.
