Sunday Rest: aneroid. Word Not To Use Today.

Words ending in -oid remind me of three things: hemorrhoids and adenoids (for obvious reasons) and Yorkshire (because many traditional Yorkshire names sound as if they end with -oid (though admittedly they're usually spelled -oyd)).

Yorkshire: God's own county, the most beautiful place on Earth filled with the world's finest industrial heritage of dark satanic mills, and populated by the meanest-with-money, kindest, dourest, most friendly people anywhere.

Or so we're very often told, mostly by those who have left.

The word aneroid, though, has yet further horrors lurking in its depths for aneroid barometers used to be on the 'O' Level Physics syllabus. 

Now, I had an excellent Physics teacher, Mrs Whenray; I sat next to clever friends; I managed to borrow a very fine text book; and I was quite good at learning things off by heart. By these means, to everyone's amazement, I scraped through: but the experience has left a scar.

Which one was the aneroid barometer?

Well, you know something? If someone had at any point explained to me the derivation of the word, I would have known.


Illustration from Pearson Scott Foresman archives

Word Not To Use Today: aneroid. This word comes from French, from the Greek an- meaning not, and the Greek nēros, which means wet.