We’re back!

Yes, Webb’s “Weird Words” is at last returning to … well, weird words!

Since late July, we’ve been down a rabbit-hole on grammar, trying to lift the stigma against ain’t — as well as foolish rules about terminal prepositions and split infinitives; and then we worked to straighten out who-whom, along with those tricky verbs lay and lie.

But now I see that Microsoft Word has red-lined ain’t — so apparently, my computer ain’t listening … though I’m pretty sure my cell-phone does this with shameless regularity.

(Wups — almost went down another rabbit-hole there!)

In any case, Word also red-lined a few of the terms I just picked out from my sprawling list of oddball vocab — which is what we usually deal with in this column. So, we’ve got work to do!

Here’s a brand-new batch:

Ascocarp (ASS-kuh-carp, noun) – This is one of those definitions that drives people nuts when they use the dictionary: “A globular structure containing the asci.” That’s from the exhaustive Collins — and happily, asci is on the same page: “The plural of ascus.” Grrrrr! And so we look again — also happily on the same page: An ascus is a saclike structure that produces spores during sexual reproduction in certain fungi and mildew.

Phew. Not exactly a conversation-starter.

Cuck (KUK, noun) – A man whose wife is cheating on him.

This is apparently a shortening of the somewhat more common cuckold, which means the same thing and is a frequent insult in the works of Shakespeare.

Cuckold appears to derive from cuckoo, a creature that sometimes lays eggs in other birds’ nests. According to Wikipedia, “cuckold” is also a biology term for “a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring.” (Not hard to see the connection with infidelity there!)

Merriam-Webster is the only source I could find for cuck; its listing includes numerous amusing synonyms for a cheated-on male: “cornute, cornuto, hoddy-doddy, hoddypoll, horn, ram, and wittol (a man who is aware of his wife’s infidelity and acquiesces to it).” Yikes.

M-W is understandably puzzled that we have so many words to call a male in this position, but regarding women with an unfaithful spouse: “For that, our language appears to have but a single word, and an obscure one at that: cuckquean.”

Eyre (AIR, noun) – “A circuit traveled by an itinerant justice in medieval England” — or, the court presided over by this roving figure (Merriam-Webster). This word derives from the common Latin base err-, meaning “to wander.” That root has given us words like errand and knight-errant — a knight who roams, of course — along with a whole family of words meaning “mistake” (i.e., “a wandering from the truth”): error, err, erroneous, etc.

And for the record, while I cannot quite connect Charlotte Bronte’s famed heroine Jane Eyre to an itinerant judge, that very talented author does love thematic resonance in her names (“Rochester,” for instance, literally means “camp of the rock”); and there’s no doubt Jane, while also being an “heir,” is likewise a wanderer … especially in the final section of that amazing novel.

Pattypan (PAH-tee-pan, noun) – Pronounced exactly as you might expect (“patty”), this is not a childhood hand-game, but rather “a variety of wheel-shaped summer squash with a ribbed edge” (Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary). Also called cymling (“SIM-ling”), this vegetable is named for its patty-like shape — though it’s a good deal larger than your average burger!

Razee (ray-ZEE, noun) – “A sailing ship that has had its upper deck removed” (Collins). Can also be a verb, meaning to take off that upper deck. And yes, this word is related to the more common raze, meaning to demolish, level or remove. That in turn is linguistically tied to razor — and, for that matter, also to erase.

Well, we managed only five today before running out of space; so let me end by going down one final rabbit-hole:

In the pronunciations above, did you notice the “C” in cymling is pronounced as S, while in cuck that same letter makes a K sound? So if you think about it, we really don’t even need C; each of its sounds is already covered by another letter! All it does is cause headaches with pronunciation and spelling. This is why the somewhat more efficient Greek language doesn’t even have an equivalent to C.

So next time you lament that something — like maybe a bit of the material above — is “all Greek to me,” just remember: At least they have the sense not to double up letters!