Word of the Day

[britechguy]

Since we seem to have a number of people who have an interest in low-frequency words, and are amused by learning more of them, why not a topic dedicated to same? We may not have one literally every day, but it's a good place to add the next one when the mood strikes.

Initial entry: callipygian

 

[ThatPlace928]

My ex and I used to have a get together at our place about once a week to play the Dictionary game. One person would look up a word from the dictionary and the rest of us would come up with our own definitions of what we thought the word meant. We would write it on a piece of paper and pass it to the person with the word. Reading the answers was hilarious....

One word I'll never forget was Palimpsest. I don't know why it stuck with me but it did.

noun​

1. A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely scraped off or erased and often legible.
2. An object or area that has extensive evidence of or layers showing activity or use.
3. A parchment which has been written upon twice, the first writing having been erased to make place for the second. The erasures of ancient writings were usually carried on in monasteries, to allow the production of ecclesiastical texts, such as copies of church services and lives of the saints. The difficulty of recovering the original text varied with the process used to prepare the parchment for a fresh writing; the original texts on parchments which had been washed with lime-water and dried...

 

[frase]

Sesquipedalian

 

[ThatPlace928]

Sesquipedalian

Great word..... I know a few people who do this..... lol

 

[fincoder]

Initial entry: callipygian

NSFW?

 

[Mick]

NSFW?

Yeah - steatopygous is better

 

[HCHTech]

Emicate

I love this one because it is an old word that died off, then got a new life with a different-ish meaning.

So when you are working with iron, like a blacksmith would, and you heat it red-hot and start hitting it with a hammer, tiny little particles fly off of the main piece. They emicate. I found this word in the OED in the boss' office one weekend (I don't think he ever cracked the spine on any of the books,, but they looked impressive on the shelf. For a long time whenever I came upon a dictionary, I would see if this word was in it, and most always, it wasn't.

When I was in the retirement plan industry, I used this word in a letter to describe the process of employees who started to leave a company after it was acquired and the new owners cut pay, increased hours, and generally made it a bad place to work - turning up the pressure and heat. One of the lawyers copied on that letter called me to talk about my use of the word - we were off and on friends for a few years because of that.

Now, it's in dictionaries again, generally with the meaning "sparkle", you get the idea, but it's not as much fun as the story that goes with the original meaning.

 

[Philippe]

I found this today: not a word but a full list of expressions. I really didn't know so much French expressions were/are used in English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_words_and_expressions_in_English