Word of the Day: truttaceus

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truttaceus [troo-TAY-shuss] (adjective): TWITO, page 149

Pertaining to or like a trout.

"....crowded with the boats of paradise, we would fancy parades and serenades mid its roral gales, lepid glens and truttaceus charms...."
—Anonymous, in The New Rugbeian (1859)

A "chub" and a catfish -- those are the only types of fish I ever caught. And I threw them back. That's the kind of guy I am.

Word of the Day: cachinnate

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cachinnate (verb), TWITO page 26

To laugh loudly

"By no means is the wit of a kind to please the ‘groundlings’; there is nothing of that 'capital fun' in it that so tickles the genuine John Bull, who, if he exerts his risible faculties at all, is satisfied with nothing less than a horse-laugh, which may be classical enough, because, we suppose, it was after that fashion that the centaurs of antiquity used to cachinnate."
--Antonius Anthus, in The Foreign Monthly Review and Continental Literary Journal (1839)

Things that make me cachinnate: bigfoot reports, possibly apocryphal George W. Bush quotations ("Too bad the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur"), pro wrestling, The Office (meaning the TV show, especially the British version), and puns.

Word of the Day: escritoire

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escritoire [ess-krih-TWAR](noun): TWITO, page 48

A writing desk

"...this diverted suspicion into a new channel, and it was suggested that the robbery and the murder had really been committed by common housebreakers. It was then discovered that a large purse of gold, and a diamond cross, which the escritoire contained, were gone."
--Edward Bulwer Lytton, Devereux (1829)

Perhaps you are seated at an escritoire at this very moment. For myself, I prefer to curl up on the couch (also: sofa; grandma called it a "davenport") with my laptop as I tap my way along the information superhighway to my literary destiny.

Why is a raven like a writing desk? Because they both have quills?