The Vocabula Review had a post asking for a word meaning able to grow without any light.
A reply gave the word "scotohil" which was new to me, but is in my dictionary.
Edit: Thank Alex williams for telling me about typo. I should indeed have been "scotophil".

Hi, Bill

Would this word just be restricted to either plants or animals--or is it all-inclusive? I'm between classes, so have to fly!

Happy you're here!

WW

Sear WW: all of the organisms found in the deep ocean trenches would have to
be scoptophilic.There are blind fishes deep in aquifers below limestone deposits.
It might even fit earthworms, perhaps the starnose moles. I haven't seen but
just the one sentence about it.

All these various spelling have me in the dark. (Sorry, bad pun intended.) "Scotohil" seems like it should be scotophil, as in eosinophil. Now we have scoptophilic.. So what is the correct root for "dark," and how is it related to "scotomata," the visual disturbances experienced by migraine sufferers?

Scoto- is the proper prefix; -phil is the proper root. The word is scotophil.

Scotophil looks like a person who likes Scots.

And a scatophile is someone who likes... jazz music with scat singing.

"scotomata," the visual disturbances experienced by migraine sufferers

I think the scotoma itself is just the small area of disordered vision/blind spot. The migraine sufferer has "scintillating scomata;" macular problems will give a "central scotoma," etc.

In reply to:

---

I think the scotoma itself is just the small area of disordered vision/blind spot. The migraine sufferer has "scintillating scomata;" macular problems will give a "central scotoma," etc.

---

Now I see (sorry, bad pun). I had a migrine once with scintillating scomata. It was truly horrible. I was in eighth grade, had this splitting headache all day, and ended up throwing up when I got home. Didn't even know what a migraine was at the time.

One of Oliver Sacks' books compares the drawings some historic nun made of her visions (I forget her name) to scintillating scomata, and he makes a pretty good case that she was in fact having migraines.

some historic nun

Hildegard?

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/hildegarde.html

Scroll down to the last section. Or read the whole thing. She was a fascinating woman, migraines or no.

Her name's on the tip of my tongue... it was Sister Mary somebody... [/attempt at humor]