Spelling bee words"
almerzo alogism alopecoid alphagram althorn altricial alveolar

altricial was posted a couple months ago, but I'll bet only Wordwind remembers it.

alveolar is associated with speech sound production, but also with medicine.

"Downtown in the old city was the best place to eat. If you looked around and found a "local" place you
could get "almerzo", which is a set meal of the day (soup, main course, drink, and dessert) for as little as
$.80. The bad news was that it always included white sticky rice and some very chewy meat which was
sometimes hard to identify. But it filled you up and was cheap so I partook.

Joke on me. I thought it was related to "alopecia = baldness", But no, it means "fox-like".
I expect trouble finding etymology of that.

Well, I'll be doubledipped in dung, look at this:
alopecia
n.
5L, baldness, fox mange < Gr albpekia < albpcx, a fox6 loss of hair, esp. on the head; baldness

I'll dive in and chance it. Isn't vulvine also a word meaning characteristic of a fox?

Will go check on Onelook...back in a second.


Edit: Back. It's vulpine, not vulvine. Must have had that fable about the fox and the grapes in my head, ergo the "vine" part. Vulvine wasn't an entry anywhere on Onelook. Too bad. It's a nice-sounding word.

Dear WW: The Vulvine Gate leads to the Promised Land.

I don't think you wanna go there, Dub'.

The little tiny airsacs in lungs that give off CO2 and take up O2 are called alveoli. But the
sockets of teeth also alveoli. The progressively smaller air passages are reminiscent of
grape stems and fruits. The word to describe this is "racemose". That gets complicated
in organic chemistry where a "racemic" misture meany having both optical isomers. Presumably
becaue tartaric acid was one of the first optical isomers studied.