Word To Use Today: squirrel.

 This choice of word is a bit mean, quite honestly, because squirrel is a really hard word to say if your native tongue (are we allowed to call them that any more?) is French, for instance. (Other hard-to-pronounce words, according to a survey on Reddit, involve the words sixth, rural, isthmus and choir).

But, hey, squirrels are cute:

photo of a red squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris, by Peter Trimming

...well, they are as long as they're not in your garden digging up the tulip bulbs (which they can't be, because all the squirrels in the world are currently wreaking havoc in mine).*

The other sort of squirrel is human, and then the word describes someone who hoards things - not in a massive, about-to-be-buried-by-a-mountain-of newspaper way, but more in the sense of keeping things like sweet-wrappers just in case, um, you want to make a picture using sweet-wrappers...or wrap some sweets.

The bushy-tailed type of squirrels usually squirrel nuts, but that's actually completely sensible behaviour. Unlike digging up bulbs you don't even eat.

Still, the derivation of the word is beautiful.

Word To Use Today: squirrel. This word comes from the Old French esquireul, from the Latin sciūrus, from the Greek skiouros, from skia, shadow plus oura, tail.

*Though, to be fair, it might have been the blasted badgers, instead. 

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