Some time ago, I came upon the term hab-dabs in my reading — a perfect candidate for these “weird word” columns. When that happens, I look the word up to make sure it’s official, then add it to my ever-growing list — which currently stands at 2,923. Then this week, when I glanced over that
“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
This one is strictly for the birds. Or rather, bird lovers. Of course, many Webb readers already feel that these word-columns do indeed qualify for that opening bird-idiom — which means “worthless, stupid or completely undesirable” (thefreedictionary.com). But many of us sometimes geek out over vocab, semantics and even etymology. And if, like me, you
Here in Webb’s “Weird Words” slot, we like themes. Indeed, over the past 85 installments, we’ve selected oddball vocabulary based on animals, money, romance, Easter, Christmas, March madness, April Fools’ and even the presidential inauguration. We’ve covered long words, short words, hyphens, doublets, blends and “kangaroo words” — while side-stepping into such other linguistic areas
Two thousand eight hundred and seventy-four. I’ve been collecting weird vocabulary for roughly 20 years — culled from reading in books and articles, along with the occasional oddity in conversation, from Jeopardy or on the internet. (And sometimes, I just go fishing in one of my hard-copy dictionaries.) As you may have guessed, my list
