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Laurence Sterne’s acclaimed novel - a prime example of circumbendibus
Word of the week: Not a snaking elongated piece of public transport but still a very evocative 17th-century word for a circuitous, long-winded route or way of doing something or telling a story …
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The Deoch an Dorus pub in Partick, Glasgow
Word of the week: From the17th-century Scottish Gaelic phrase, deoch an doruis (and also with the form deochandorus), this literally means “door-drink” – a toast made with, or to honour, someone about to depart
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Meme of the time: four lads in jeans, Birmingham 2019
Word of the week: Aside from the literal outer layer of the ray-finned slippery fish, this evocative, slightly suggestive 19th-century slang means very tight trousers, while this week’s bonus word, excruciators, points to the experience of wearing very tight shoes
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A flittermouse in action ...
Word of the week: With other variants such as flickermouse and flinder-mouse, this rather charming Tudor-period English noun is a rather evocative and onomatopoeically descriptive one for that quietly sonic-guided night creature – the bat
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A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow
Word of the week: From the Ancient Greek, γνώμων (gnṓmōn)this pointed noun literally means one that knows or examines, but it is specifically the part of a sundial that casts a shadow as well as referring to other mathematical terms
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The Green Man
Word of the week: Two lesser known and very similar adjectives from the Latin word heder – hederaceous meaning resembling ivy, while hederigerent describing that which is dressed with or bedecked in ivy
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Dip yours here …
Word of the week: An evocative noun in reference to old-fashioned desk ink wells dipped into by quills or ink pens – an inkhornist is a pedant of words, while the phrase smelling of the inkhorn refers to be being excessively pedantic with language or grammar. But how does it shape up in song?
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Jenticulate with the jentacular in the morning …
Word of the week: A tasty noun and an adjective all associated with the first meal of the day - one means to take breakfast, the other, with a variant spelling, describes anything related to that meal. Both derive from the Latin noun ientaculum, meaning a breakfast taken immediately on getting up
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Titania falls under a kalopsian spell in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Drawing by Charles Buchel, 1905
Word of the week: A noun describing distorted perception, meaning the delusion of seeing things as being more beautiful than they are, or through rose-tinted glasses
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Loweswater in the Cumbrian Lake District
Word of the week: A poetic word taken from the Latin lacus and French or Italan lacustre, this shimmering liquid of an adjective means relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes, lake-like or positioned by a lake
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"The Macaroni. A real Character at the late Masquerade", a 1773 mezzotint by Philip Dawe
Word of the week: While distantly linked to the Italian pasta dish, this 17th-18th century adjective means dandified, fancy, or over-the-top, in reference to the flamboyant macaroni hairpiece commonly worn by wealthy young men returning from their Grand Tour of Europe
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A noddypoll may be a fool, but can a fool be wise?
Word of the week: This week’s whimsy dates back to as early as 1529 in the the writing of Tudor poet John Skelton, with one of several words for number of similar words for fools or simpletons, pertaining to those who might unthinkingly nod their head to anything
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Ooftish
Word of the week: This evocative term is derived from the Yiddish expression gelt afn tish, meaning cash money on the table, ooftish was common slang for money or cash in late-19th to mid-20th century English, with oofless in turn meaning skint, poor or bankrupt
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Illustration from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel by Gustave Doré
Word of the week: Huge, gigantic, enormous, voracious or insatiable, this colourful adjective derives from the character in the pioneering 16th-century French prose writer François Rabelais’s multiple volume work, Gargantua and Pantagruel
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Quaquaversal firework
Word of the week: An adjective with origins in the late 17th century meaning pointing or heading off in all directions – particularly as in the point of a compass, sometimes pertaining to geographical structure, or such as with an exploding firework
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Rucklety-tucklety cloth
Word of the week: This beautifully strange, rhythmic, rhyming, onomatopoeic English word hails from the 18th century, meaning crumpled or gathered up, often pertaining to cloth or clothing, and deriving from the word for crease – a ruckle
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Homer and Bart Simpson in a regular moment of spanwhengling
Word of the week: This colourfully archaic English verb, thought to have origins in the Leeds and immediate Yorkshire area, means to shake or knock something violently
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Umbriphilous bluebells …
Word of the week: An adjective describing that which loves the shade, whether person, plant or otherwise, from the Latin, umbra, for shade and related to other derivatives, such as umbraphile, one who loves eclipses
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Vorlus-snorlus numbers
Word of the week: A strangely poetic, archaic Gloucestershire term meaning haphazard, pertaining to a a person who acts at random, possibly a corruption of the Latin term nolens volens, meaning neither willing nor unwilling, related to the word willy-nilly
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Alan Rickman as whe wheedling, warzling Obadiah Slope in a BBC TV production of The Barchester Chronicles
Word of the week: An evocative Old English-origin dialect word for sycophantic flattery, pertaining to sly persuasion for favours, it derives from two old English words – wær meaning cautious, and sealm meaning speech
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