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This week’s word might involve a fat dictionary
Word of the week: First appearing in English in the mid-17th century, meaning “a foot and a half long”, it’s a noun identifying words with multiple syllables, or an often derogatory adjective for a person with a tendency to use overlong words
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Three-banded tolypeutine
Word of the week: A noun related to the term Tolypeutinae, this is a subfamily of Chlamyphoridae of the armadillo family, consisting of the giant, naked-tailed and particularly the three-banded species
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Sheep are naturally ulotrichous
Word of the week: While it’s entirely natural in animals such as sheep as well as some humans, depending on an individual’s point of view it’s either a blessing or a curse. From Greek words oûlos (crisp, curly) and -trikhos (haired), this adjective means having curly or woolly hair
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Chateau Marmont Hotel, West Hollywood, California
Word of the week: It’s something in which many of us may indulge during the thick of winter, planning for holidays via booking websites, this noun meaning the study of hotels, extending also to researching their lore and history
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That distinctive gingerbread twang
Word of the week: Two alternative spellings, spicily evocative and colourful, they are adjectives pertaining to the Zingiberaceae family of flowering plants that variously bring that distinctive flavour of, and are a rather fancy way of saying – ginger
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A row of aquabobs
Word of the week: Sounding like some water-based children’s TV superhero, it’s actually a particularly apt and descriptive word for wintertime, being an 18th-century English Kent dialect noun meaning icicle
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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 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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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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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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Chews … Wrigley’s - poster campaign around 1929-1936
Word of the week: A tasteful word in a sense – but not, unfortunately, referring to any form of gentle, dental, melodic xylophone-style playing, but simply an 18th-century dialect word for chewing or mastication
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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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Pages 150-151 of Robert Recorde’s 1557 work The Whetstone of Witte describes the cubic term of zenzizenzizenzic
Word of the week: We return to the alphabet’s end with a word that’s as wonderfully weird, yet buzzily beautifully in sound as it is obscure and obsolete – an antiquated mathematical term meaning the eighth power of a number x, where x is multiplied by itself 8 times
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Meadowlark at first light
Word of the week: An evocative, poetic French word adopted into English language in the 17th century meaning a song or poem set, or performed, at dawn or evoking daybreak, most often about lovers separating – and the flipside of a serenade
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The Suzuki Omnichord
Word of the week: Out latest instrument in the series is was first released in 1981 by Suzuki, including a touch plate called SonicStrings, preset rhythms, auto-bass line function, and sets of single buttons for playing major, minor, and 7th chords in different keys
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