I’ve got a thing for words, I’m pretty sure people know that. Since 2013 began, it seems I’ve been stumbling across so many different ones that make me happy. Here’s a sampling.
~Uxorious, which means excessively devoted to one’s wife
~Maritorious, which means excessively devoted to one’s husband
~filipendulous, hanging by a thread
~pogonotrophy, the act of growing and grooming facial hair
~zugzwang, being in a position where any move you make will cause you to lose (or have problems) – this is also a baader-meinhof because I recently heard this word in a television show, Criminal Minds, then bam! it popped up in my word of the day email. (Similar to this morning’s schadenfreude story, except I knew that word, so it was not a bm, but instead was synchronicity).
~ktenology, the science of putting people to death
~tarantism, the uncontrollable urge to dance
~scripturient, the violent need to write
And then there were series of related words. The first is time words:
~overmorrow, relating to the day after tomorrow
~hodiernal, relating to today
~hesternal, relating to yesterday
~nudiustertian, relating to the day before yesterday
~yestreen, yesterday evening.
Then, for fun, series words about series:
~penultimate, the next to last (I already knew this one, but I did NOT know)
~antepenultimate, the third to last
~preantepenultimate, the fourth to last
~ultrapreantepenultimate, the fifth to last (there is some dispute as to whether this is an actual term, but I keep seeing it)
The musical series:
~quaver, an eighth note
~semiquaver, a sixteenth note
~semidemiquaver, a thirty-second note
~hemidemisemiquaver, a sixty-fourth note
~quasihemidemisemiquaver, a one hundred twenty-eighth note (I found this under the heading “Prefixes gone wild”)
The seasonal series:
~vernal, relating to spring
~autumnal, relating to fall
Truthfully, I knew both of those. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes took care of that. However, have you ever wondered about the other two seasons?
~hiemal, relating to winter
~estival, relating to summer
And the group series:
~monad, a single unit
~dyad, a pair
~triad, a group of three
~tetrad, a group of four
~pentad, a group of five
~hexad, a group of six
~hebdomad, a group of seven
~ogdoad, a group of eight
~ennead, a group of nine
~decad, a group of ten (from whence we get the word decade…)
~hendecad, a group of eleven
~dodecad, a group of twelve (from whence we get the word dodecahedron- or a twelve sided figure)
I could do this all day. There is little I love more than finding strange and bizarre words to help explain the world around me. Everything on here tickled my fancy, hopefully you found a little something fun for yourself. Pop into the comments and tell me which new word (or series of words) you like the best.
And this morning, a co-worker came to chat and said, “What kind of dinosaur knows a lot of words?”
“A Thesaurus”
Yuk-yuk.
Lastly, I’ll top it off with a quote I recently read. It was so appropriate I am thinking of making it my life motto. “This is the sort of thing that is extremely interesting if you are interested in this sort of thing.”
where did you read that quote, Liv? Because I just read that, too. Somewhere.
My family will soon be a pentad.
Scripturient- I would like to know who feels the need to violently write?? But my fav is overmorrow…sounds like something we’d make up down here. Totally using it!!
I felt the need to violently write today. Thus catching up on the blogging!