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Please don't hit me with a fish, but I found a very nice word in Mrs. Byrne, but cannot find it anywhere else either online or in my dictionaries here at the farm.
Mrs. Byrne's word is euphelicia, which is defined online (a dubious proposition on her site) as the happiness that results from having all one's wishes granted.
Does anyone have another source for this word? Has it been misspelled on the site? Is the definition correct? And do you think the word has been generally rejected because the genie in the lamp usually only grants up to three wishes?
Hoping this isn't another post in which I'll be cornobbled,
DD
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Dear WW: I haven't found your word just yet, but in the attempt I found a site with a couple dozen obscure words : http://pub12.ezboard.com/fdocsplacefrm67.showMessage?topicID=21.topicNow I'll go back and look for "euphelicia" again, there were more sites.
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The third site was really different. A self styled saucy minx had a list of things she was going to search for. I tried one of them and got the most amazing pictures.
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>happiness that results from having all one's wishes granted.
actually® she defines it as 'healthiness' not 'happiness'. I have not been able to confirm the word, or I would use it as a wwftd.
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...be careful what you wish for!
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Here's what the "Frugal Advisor" has (Bill's first link):
2) euphelicia \ue fe lis' i a\ (noun): healthiness resulting from having all one's wishes grantedBut this makes little sense, to me. The first thing I'd think about anybody (wish it were I!) who has all their wishes granted would be that they were happy, not healthy; unless they specified mental healthiness, which this didn't do, and that would be odd, anyway. Wow--some of the words and def.'s here are so incredible that I'd be tempted to say they were made up, but I recognize a few of them. For ex., did you-all know there's a word for being able to speak only at night? hemeraphonia. Here's an interesting one, particularly for a certain board member: "gymnophobia \jim noe foe' bi a\ (noun): fear of nudity". And a couple that I thought sounded made-up: "stomachous \stum' e kes\ (adjective): obstinate; angry"; and, "pilgarlic \pil gor' lik\ (noun): a bald head that looks like peeled garlic". Ohhhh, Dr. Bill...I think I just found a new near-favorite word: "dulciloquy \dul sil' e kwee\ (noun): softness in speaking". I love the meaning, and I LOVE the sound, nice and slow: dul-SILL-lohh-kwee... Thank you! 
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just so y'all know, fwiw, all of the words at the Obscure and Unusual words site are from Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary and everything in SKB's dictionary marked with a (B) is from the same source. and lest you think I'm completely down on Mrs. B., I'm not. I'm sure she found all of these words in a real source, it's just that some of her sources are of doubtful value, and she doesn't indicate which words come from where -- you should see her bibliography; t'would be a major project just to reverse engineer her book.
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Dear tsuwm: a half-hearted quibble: How can you tell the words are from Mrs. Byrne, and not from her source, or some other source? Would in not be actionable to just take from her?
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bill, like I said her bibliography is extensive, as in it extends to four(4) pages; i.e., her words come from a variety of sources. when a person has a list of dozens of words and they all can be found in Mrs. B, or when everything in a *very sizable list like skb's that is marked with a (B) can be found in Mrs. B, what would you conclude? and what's she gonna do about it when she borrowed it all in the first place? I'd be willing to bet dollars to dooabs that that site which features a random sampling of her words, attributed to her, garners her naught but the publicity.
amateur lexicography is a torturous endeavour. folks steal shamelessly from one another. : )
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OK,tsuwm. I forgot you mentioned the (B) business. Anyway, with my memory, they were new to me. At least I have been having fun searching. I did a lot of looking without success to find either a Latin or a Greek word for "ball of twine." So I sent PM to NicholasW to see if he knows one.
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Dr. Bill glomus -eris n. [clue , skein, ball of thread].From Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htmThere, I hope you're healthy, but to imagine that Ariadne spoke Latin is anachronism of the highest degree.
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enthusiast
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Oh, I've just replied privately to this. The Greek might be _klo^sma_ 'clue, thread', related to Clotho the Fate but not to 'clue'; but I can't find a quotation confirming it's the word used in the labyrinth story.
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Dear wwh,
I'll spend a bit of time with your links today. I'm glad Jackie is so happy with her finds! (Jackie, I'll think about your happiness with soft things today, OK, and send you something soft later today.)
And tsuwm: Please see whether you can confirm the word. I misstyped the happiness instead of heathfulness (or was it healthiness? poor, poor brain, mine). But Aristotle wrote about happiness at LENGTH, and health was one of the constituents of happiness, so at least health's been subsumed by happiness--or subtsuwmed.
And Faldage: glomus is such a great sphere you provided here--much mental fodder to chew there.
Best regards to all--the board is percolating along nicely, I think,
WW
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Looks like made-up nonsense to me. There's no Greek root phel- or phelik- that fits. I think it's the result of a blasphemous mating or railway accident between 'euphoria' and 'felicity', me.
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"pilgarlic \pil gor' lik\ (noun): a bald head that looks like peeled garlic".
Jackie gave us the above. Now, is there truly here on Earth a bald head that looks like peeled garlic? I don't think I've seen such a head. It seems the Cone Heads come closest. I've never heard a person say, "Heh! Doesn't that bald head look liked peeled garlic?"
This is very, very puzzling to me.
Bothered regards,
WordWorried
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In the kidney, there are many small spherical structures called "glomeruli" in which tiny arteries and the beginning of the urine collecting tubules are intmately in contact, to allow waste products to pass from blood into the urine. I am still puzzled why the Labyrinth legend did not bring into English a word from one of these two roots. For an interesting site about beginnings of etymology see this URL: http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/cunni06.htmYou can't blame me for the anatomically explicit symbol at the beginning.
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I've never heard a person say, "Heh! Doesn't that bald head look liked peeled garlic?"
This is very, very puzzling to me.
Yup. You have just hit the garlic on the head as to why it sounds made up to me.
Looking forward to soft things. Speaking of which: Angel, I'll gladly take all the snow you can send me!
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you guys! you reject actual words like pilgarlic and then blithely accept nonsense like euphelicia, just 'cuz it sounds nice. [now what'd I do with that harumph macro...]
pilgarlic - An appellation given first to a ‘pilled’ or bald head, ludicrously likened to a peeled head of garlic (see garlic-head, garlic n. 3), and then to a bald-headed man, sometimes with insinuation as to an alleged cause (quots. 1619, 1671); from the 17th c. applied in a ludicrously contemptuous or mock-pitiful way: ‘poor creature’. Now dial. in various shades of meaning. Also attrib.
1619 J. T. (title) The Hunting of the Pox: a pleasant Discourse betweene the Authour and Pild-Garlike, wherein is declared the Nature of the Disease, how it came, and how it may be cured. Ibid. i, I ouertooke Pild-Garlike on the way. Ibid. ii, He had of Spanish Buttons store vpon his forehead mixt; And where that they were falne away, there Stooles in place were fixt. 1671 Skinner Etymol. Ling. Angl., Pill'd or Peel'd Garlick, cui Cutis (hoc est Pellis) vel Pili omnes ex morbo aliquo, præsertim Lue Venerea, defluxerunt.
-the Latin word for the day is saepe, often
Minus saepe erres si scias quid nescias.
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Dear tsuwm,
Well, I, for one, don't believe euphelicia should die any sort of death, so I'm going to use it on this board as many times as I think appropriate.
Let's see:
There can follow the redundantly, oh-so-happy being, the euphelician.
And, of course, all states euphelicious.
And, naturally, states eupheliciate.
And--this will make you very happy--the ability to euphelicize, though that one's unsatisfactory. Maybe someone will propose an improved verb.
Did Mrs. Byrne have a bevy of creative souls beating their wings about her, I wonder, filling her whimsical head?
Eupheliciously yours,
Wordwind
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hep yersef, but you ain't never gone be able to use it at Scrabble™!
euphenic - dealing with biological improvement
euphony
euphoria
euphotic
euphrasy
euphroe(!)
euphuism - an artificially elegant style of writing
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tsuwm, who are you calling eu-phony?  I've been reading the news on the younger generation in China; that is, youth in Asia. And btw tsuwm, if Euripides threads, then we insist wtih fury Eumenides. 
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Scrabble's got major problems. I don't think I like the stupid game anymore. It's by far too linear in its components, and it restrains and constricts word happiness.
Best regards,
A Confirmed Euphelician,
WordWise though poor speller
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I dunno..... [musing] .... unless your wishes were very carefully chosen, having all of them granted would not necessarily lead to either h.
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You could always play Mrs. Byrne Scrabble. Only words allowed are words found in Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary.
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[blink]Scrabble's got major problems. I don't think I like the stupid game anymore.[/blink]!!!
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Scrabble's got major problems. I don't think I like the stupid game anymore. It's by far too linear in its
components, and it restrains and constricts word happiness.
Try cryptic (aka puns & anagrams) crossword puzzles instead.
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unless your wishes were very carefully chosen, having all of them granted would not necessarily lead to either h.
A thought illustrated by numerous jokes... [hint-e]
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Dear Keiva: I wish I could be assured of youth in Asia.
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Dear Wordwind: I found it! You have to click on "Recent Issues" Then scroll way down to December, then click on "The biology of..... it says cheese, but up came the article for me. http://www.discover.com/recent_issue/index.html
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