Word To Use Today: xenogenesis.

English doesn't have nearly enough words beginning with the letter X, and those we have tend to be rather technical and useless (like xenocryst, which is a crystal which forms as lava is cooling, but disappears before it is cold. That's what the dictionary says it is, anyway).

Still, even xenocryst is useful as a spur to the imagination...what if a xenocryst had some quality or magical power, the need for which involved a quest into the crater of a volcano? That's an idea upon which to hang a story...and, you never know, I might do just that.

But the word which I'm actually intending to present to you as a gift to your imaginations is xenogenesis. This is the (unreal) process by which parents give birth to a child completely unlike themselves.

photo by Alan D Mason

You could create a whole epic, or a whole religion, around that idea.

Have fun as you do.

Word To Consider Today: xenogenesis. The Greek word xenos means strange. Genesis is an Old English word, from the Greek word gignesthai, to be born.