Ubiety, Dendrophile, Rhathymia, Afflatus, Oscitancy

Ah nature! The ubiety of the park was ideal for dendrophiles, and gave Cedric, in the mood for rhathymia, a sudden afflatus. He closed his eyes and leaned toward Millicent, expecting a kiss, but all she offered was oscitancy.

Read all about them!

ubiety = the state of being in a particular place (TWITO, page 152)
dendrophile = a lover of trees (page 144)
rhathymia = carefree behavior (page 125)
afflatus = an inspiration or creative impulse (page 12)
oscitancy = the act of yawning, the state of being drowsy (page 104)

Anodyne, Rannygazoo, Fantods, Perspicacious, Embuggerance, Tohubohu

"Hector's fantods erupted when his rannygazoo, which he thought would be perceived by his perpicacious friends as annondyne, or at worst as an embuggerance, created a complete tohubohu."

Read all about them:

Fantods = a state of extreme nervoud anxiety (TWITO, page 52)
Rannygazoo = a joke or prank (page 122)
Perspicacious = having keen understanding, mental perception, or discernment (page 110)
Anodyne = something that lessens pain; isn't likely to disturb or annoy (page 14)
Embuggerance = a small, annoying problem (page 46)
Tohubohu = a state of chaos or confusion (page 147)

Words I'm Thinking Of: toubbillon, doolally, killcow

Tourbillon = a whirlwind or vortex, like a hurricane

"...do you think that a seat upon the bench would have removed me from the tourbillon of politics?" -- John Quincy Adams (1811), TWITO, page 148

Doolally = insane, mad, eccentric

"I like talking to people who are a little doolally," said Lisa. "Not a lot crazy, just a little bit." TWITO, page 42.

Killcow = an arrogant or bullying person

"Don't be such a killcow," Helen said when Karl kept interrupting her. "What do you mean?" he replied. "I'm a vegetarian!" TWITO, page 80

Word of the Day: lachrymose

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's....

lachrymose [LAK-rih-mos] (adjective), TWITO, page 82

Mournful or tearful

"Her tears seemed to grieve the kind-hearted Munchkins, who became lachrymose and began pulling out handkerchiefs."
--L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Word of the Day: curwhibble

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's...

curwhibble [KUR-wib-ul] (noun), TWITO, page 37

A thingamajig or whatchmacallit

"Many thanks to your honor. What pretty curwhibbles and etceteras! I’ll hang ’em to my watch to give it a travelled air.”
--Anonymous, "A Captivity among the Rockites," in The Metropolitan (1831)

More junk. There are many objects around my home that one might call thingamajigs, whatchmacallits, or even curwhibbles. For example, something I found in a Chinese junk shop that hangs from a floor-lamp's switch. This whatsit has a little metal fan on top, from which is suspended an oddly shaped brass bell with some inscrutable writing engraved on it. And from that hangs a coin of some sort, with a square hole in the middle. There are bas-relief dragons curled around the hole, as if guarding it. And there are also red tassels hanging from various parts of this thing. I guess you could call it a bell, but it's much more than that. Altogether, when suspended, it's about 10 inches (25 cm) long. It is completely useless. And that’s what I like about it.

Word of the Day: acephalia

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's....

acephalia (noun) or acephalic (adjective) [TWITO, page 10]

The absence of a head or the absence of a brain

"Comparative anatomy, and acephalic monstrosities among the mammalia and man, furnish incontrovertible proofs of the brain not being the origin of the nervous system at large."
--Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, The Anatomy of the Brain (1826)

Yoko Ono once said, "Consider if it is such a catastrophe to live without your head." She added that it might make it easier to move around, since one's body would be so much lighter. Zen humor aside, I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a state of acephalia. I often live in my head--the curse or blessing of the introvert, depending on how you look at it. I do have a rich interior life that would be hard to give up.
I wouldn't mind getting rid of the nattering jukebox of stuck records that is sometimes set to forte in my head, though.

Word of the Day: truttaceus

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's...

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

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's...

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.

My Word of the Year: Kakistocracy

The Word I'm Thinking Of's word of the year is "kakistrocracy" (TWITO, page 79): government by the worst, most unprincipled, or least qualified.

Christmas Gift Idea

"A dictionary makes a great Christmas gift."
--Unknown (possibly Noah Webster)

Wandering Word Thoughts: Do We ALL Live in a Yellow Submarine?

Did you hear the appoggiatura in that song? (That's an ornamental note, related melodically to the main note.)

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Are you watching the new Twin Peaks? Lots of gapeseed from Mr. Lynch. (gapeseed = an astonishing sight)

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"Before his morning coffee, Winston was comatose; afterword, he was operose." (TWITO, page 103) To be "operose" is to be industrious.

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A honeypot is not at all sweet! It's a decoy computer server designed to divert hackers.

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You could find Northern Lights in a yellow submarine. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! (Northern Lights is a strain of marijuana, and a "yellow submarine" is slang for a joint.)

Wandering Word Thoughts: Thunderation!

Be aware that in Japanese, "aware" means "the bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beauty".

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Thunderation! Better to be a fopdoodle than a mumblecrust, right? All of those are historical curse words.

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The paperback edition of my book isn't a dusty, moldering (seeming) "incunabulum" (TWITO, page 72) like the ones in this picture. And the Kindle and audiobook editions definitely are not: The Word I'm Thinking Of

(Technically, an "incunabulum" is a book printed before the 16th century.)

Wandering Word Thoughts

"Gumsuck me goodbye, honey!" Gumsuck is a 19th-century slang term for "kiss". Ewww....

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To thine own ipseity be true. Ipseity is a word for "selfhood" or the ability to be oneself.

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Any other epeolatrists out there? Epeolatry is the worship of words.

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One of my favorite words is fulgent (meaning "shining brightly"). "Unable to sleep, he wandered the hills that night, under the fulgent moon." (TWITO, page 58)



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Are you sesquipedalian? Then you like to use long words.

Wandering Word Thoughts

"Otherkin" (adjective) was recently added to Oxford Dictionaries. It denotes people who identify as non-human. Hmm. Are you glad we finally have a word for that?

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There are 18 ways to say "awesome" according to this site:

18 ways

But they forgot "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"!

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A "gobemouche" (TWITO, page 61) is a credulous person. It literally means "someone who swallows flies". (Think about it with your mouth open.)

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So Merriam and Webster can't agree on the pronunciation of "GIF". I'd say it's a hard G, like in....well, Gates.

Two FREE Kindle e-Books

Fire up your e-readers! My two Kindle editions on Amazon are FREE from February 19th through February 23rd. A funny dictionary and a scary story -- what a combination! Both have 4.5-star ratings (out of 5) on Amazon.

The Word I'm Thinking Of
The Iron Box

Two FREE Kindle E-books

Fire up your e-readers! My two Kindle editions on Amazon are FREE from October 12th through October 16th. A funny dictionary and a scary story -- what a combination! Both have 4.5-star ratings (out of 5) on Amazon.

The Word I'm Thinking Of
The Iron Box

Fire up your e-readers! My two Kindle editions on Amazon are FREE from May 17th through May 21st. A funny dictionary and a scary story -- what a combination! (Both have 4.5 stars on Amazon.)

The Word I'm Thinking Of
The Iron Box

That's right, Free. What, you don't have a Kindle? You can download the app on your phone or computer. That's free too: free Kindle apps

Word of the Day: pasticcio

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today it's...

pasticcio [pa-STEE-cho] (noun) [TWITO, page 107]

A work or style consisting of borrowed fragments, ingredients, or motifs assembled from various sources; a potpourri

"What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added to?"
--Robert Smythe Hichens, The Way of Ambition (1913)

"On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me."
--Sir Richard Runciman Terry, The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties (1921)

Hey, all you wordcatchers, I know this sounds like something you might order in an Italian restaurant, but it appears in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, so I think it's worth featuring.

(Photo by me. My wife assembled this hat and actually wore it to an event.)

Word of the Day: mooncalf

What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's....

mooncalf [MOON-kaf] (noun) [TWITO, page 90]

A freak or monster; a fool, a daydreamer

"Instead of a purse or a bubble, which incloses the foetus, there was a globulous body like a moon-calf, or false-conception, which contained nothing organized, and which being opened presented nothing different from a moon-calf, nothing that was any way formed or regularly disposed...."
--Anonymous, "On the Formation of a Chicken in the Egg" in London Magazine (1752)

Word of the Day: oscitancy

What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today, it's...

oscitancy [OSS-it-an-see] (noun) [TWITO, page 104]

1. The act of yawning
2. The state of being drowsy or inattentive; dullness

"Melanie began to describe her shopping trip, but Nick couldn’t hide his oscitancy."


(photo by me...yawn)