Wordsmith.org
Posted By: wwh AWAD archives Aug 96 - 07/09/03 04:03 PM
uxorial
affiance
conjugal
nuptial
sapor
viand
victual
trencherman - wordsmith doesn’t give etymology. “trencher” is French “to slice”. In medieval days, plates were expensive enough, that a big slice of bread served as the plate. Meat was put on it. And I remember reading that it was bad manners to eat the bread before the meat arrived.
frugivorous - fond of fruit. And here in Southern California, marvelous fruits from Mexico long before local ones become available. Never had it so good in MA. I’m munching delicious seedless grapes as I write this. Eat your hear out.
pica - in addition to the definition about type, there is a second word, used in medicine to refer to compulsive eating of unusual things, dirt, and peeling paint, which can give kids lead poisoning in old houses.
My dictionary says this word is related to pie, and to magpie. I wonder if “pied type” means a magpie has jumbled it.
aliment - word association - of idiot looking at formen magnum of skull, and saying “Think of all the good vittles
that went through that hole.”
plutonian - “plutonic” is used in geology to refer to behaviour of molten rock, such as the formation of such things
as Stone Mountain, not far from Atlanta
martial
saturnine - I don’t like definition Wordsmith gives. “Sardonic” means an abnormal smile, caused by ingesting a poisonous weed found on Sardinia. I think it fits better the taciturn expression of someone who does not share
childish humor or idiots.
earthy - the type of humor you would expect from peasants who reportedly used to copulate in fields in spring to invite divine augmentation of fertility of fields.
saturnalia - no saturnine facial expressions here
mercurial - I think perhaps suggested by behaviour of liquid mercury, gleaming, breaking into little spheres, and immediately again coalescing
jovial
pollyanna - I’ll bet no AWADtalk members ever read any of those boods.
quixotic - I wonder what the latinos think when they hears us gringos pronounce the “x”
frankenstein - surprising how many people think that was the name of the monster
braggadocio
malapropism - A allegory on the banks of the Nile
maffick
martinet
pickwickian
protean
pyrrhonism
punic
achates
shyster









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