Word To Use Today: mispickel.

Can there be a more cheerful word in the English language than mispickel?

And what is it?

Well, it's a rock that smells of garlic.

No, really.

It's all nice and sparkly, too. Here's a photo by Parent Géry:




As if sparkles and smelling of garlic isn't wonderful enough, it's quite likely to lead you to seams of gold, too.

Mispickel's more official name is arsenopyrite, and it has the ridiculously attractive chemical formula FeAsS.

You get arsenic from it, as its official name suggests.

And that's jolly useful, too.

Word To Use Today: mispickel. This word comes to us from Germany in the 1600s, where it started off as Misspückel. The origin of Misspückel, though, is, sadly, a mystery.