Word of the Day: cete

cete (n)

(seet)

A number of badgers together.

"Answer me now, lad, how would you say if you saw ten badgers together in the forest?"
"A cete of badgers, fair sir.
"Good, Nigel--good, by my faith! And if you walk in Woolmer Forest and see a swarm of foxes, how would you call it?"
--Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel

Of course, "badger" doesn't just refer to a burrowing mammal. It can also be a verb, meaning "to harass or annoy persistently" -- as does my neighbor's fat mutt, which lately barks at me from behind a fence the whole time I'm out in the backyard. I think I'll get a squirt gun and shoot the cur in the face one of these days.

(Cete, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)