This week's theme
Odds and ends

This week's words
apopemptic
forficate
addlepated
catawampus
scrobiculate

This week's comments
AWADmail 489

Next week's theme
Words with unusual arrangements of letters

---

Discuss
Feedback
RSS/XML

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(skroh-BIK-yuh-layt)

MEANING:

adjective:
Having many small grooves; furrowed.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin scrobiculus (small planting hole), diminutive of scrobis (trench). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sker- (to cut), which is also the source of skirt, curt, screw, shard, shears, carnage, carnivorous, carnation, sharp, and scrape. Earliest documented use: 1806.

USAGE:

"The stalk is scrobiculate and at first slightly sticky."
Alexander Smith and Nancy Weber; The Mushroom Hunter's Field Guide; University of Michigan Press; 1980.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: