Word To Use Today: biblioklept, acnestis or meldrop.

The commonest words in the English language are the, of, and and.

Three of the rarest (according to the Merriam-Webster website) are biblioklept, acnestis, and meldrop.

I'm not suggesting that rare is better than common, but if you find yourself stuck inside with people who have little new to say then you might try forbidding the use of the words the, of and and. You'll need them, of course, but you might use a click, a sniff and a kissing sound instead.

Any use of the words biblioklept, acnestis or meldrop should, of course, be acknowledged with groans.

Word To Use Today: a rare one. Biblioklept means someone who steals books. It comes from the Greek words biblion, book, and kleptes, thief; acnestis is the area of the back between the shoulder-blades downwards that you can't reach to scratch, and comes from the Greek aknestis, spine, from knestis, spine or cheese grater; and a meldrop is a drop on the end of the nose, the foam that drips from a horse's mouth, or a dew drop. This word started off as the horse-foam and comes from the Old Norse mel-dropi.