Wild Word Friday! Yes, really, HELEMUTHODOPILATAHA is a word. I think we might agree that it is the wildest wild word we’ve yet featured on our Wild Word Fridays. HELEMUTHODOPILATAHA is one way you would say the number seven if you were speaking in the language of the Wilo people who live in the Amazon basin. Now…
Wild Word Friday! Sometimes a word is pure poetry. Take DAYBREAK for example – isn’t that just a great word? And here’s the best news. English isn’t the only language to use a poetic word to depict that first daily glimpse of sun. The Sanskrit word for dawn means having become light. Russian and Polish words for DAYBREAK refer…
Wild Word Friday! You probably already know that our English word LEPRECHAUN was borrowed from the Irish, actually from the Irish Gaelic – Luprachan. In even older Gaelic form (also known as Middle Irish) this word comes from two separate words – lu, which means small, and corpan, which means little body. Now if you put these two Middle…
Wild Word Friday! Today’s wild word was suggested by my friend Jane. In a previous Wild Word Friday post, Jane mentioned that her son was reading a book to his baby daughter and came across a word he’d never seen before – NOSEGAY. He called Jane for a definition, and she told him that it was…
Wild Word Friday! You knew I’d have to follow up last Friday’s DOG day with a CAT day, right? CATs haven’t been domesticated nearly as long as dogs, and I think most CAT lovers recognize that streak of wild in their pets. A couple of summers ago, my brother and his wife and daughter were…
Wild Word Friday! Few people dispute the fact that the first domesticated animal was the DOG. Anthropologists and archaeologists tell us that the DOG was common in Europe (and in Asia, too) even in Neolithic times. We have the evidence of DOG bones in ancient village sites, but we also have evidence more subtle than that – in our words. In every…
Wild Word Friday! An interesting word, AWRY. To me it seems old fashioned. How often have you heard anyone say that something is AWRY? Actually, the only person I’ve heard use that word lately is my 91-year-old father-in-law, but, old fashioned or not, I think it’s a great word and worthy of use. And, by the…
Wild Word Friday! I’m sure you’ve been trying to find a word like LEMNISCATE all your life. Well maybe not, but it’s still an interesting word. Take the numeral 8, tip it over to its side and you’ve created a LEMNISCATE. LEMNISCATE is the name for a shape – two circles melded by a tiny waist….
Wild Word Friday! My husband and I had a great time last weekend with our friends, Karen and Dave. During one of our conversations, Karen, the mom of four kids, mentioned her favorite word – actually a word she had made up – FAIRITY. When her children were teenagers and happened to complain about the unfairness…
Wild Word Friday! When my family first moved to our little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, some of the phrases and words used by local folks weren’t familiar to us. One of these phrases was MAKING STRANGE. When you were introduced to a baby for the first (or fifth) time and he began to wail, his…
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