Sunday Rest: Word Not To Use Today: chasmogamy.

The waterlilies,
Awakened by the sun,
Unclose their shining petals
In crowns of glory.

Or, if you're a flat-footed botanist, they exhibit chasmogamy.

Chasmogamy means their flowers open to allow pollination.

Chasmogamy. I ask you.

Science doesn't have to be so ugly, you know.

Word Not To Use Today: chasmogamy. This word was made up in the 1900s. It comes from the Greek khasma, which means chasm, and gamos, which means marriage.

Yuk.

Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson.

You'd have to be mad to read Sir Charles Grandison. It's hugely long, for a start - seven volumes in the version I read - and it's all about a good man, which of course cuts down the action a great deal.

The reason I'm raving about it today is that pretty much one whole volume of Sir Charles Grandison consists of a list of the details of the hero's wedding.

At the time I read it, I thought this was a bit over-the-top.

But, today, being the day of my younger daughter's wedding, I begin to see that Richardson actually managed to give us quite a concise account of all the necessary arrangements.

In case you're thinking of reading Sir Charles Grandison despite my warning, I can tell you it's quite fun if you're not in a hurry. It's really very like a soap opera: people spend most of the time sitting around drinking beverages and yacking, and then just occasionally something terribly dramatic happens.

We won't have as many countesses at my daughter's wedding as Sir Charles Grandison had at his, but we hope to have a good time all the same.

There'll be lots of cake, anyway, if not countesses. And I know which I prefer.

Word To Use Today: wedding. This word comes from the Old English weddian, and is related to the Gothic wadi, which means pledge.

Word To Use Today: scruncheon.

If Newfoundland had given the world nothing else, then it must be forever covered in glory and garlanded with laurels and gratitude for having dragged up from who-knows-where the word scruncheon.

Which is obviously too gorgeous a word not to use on every possible occasion.

Scruncheon.

Scruncheon.

Isn't it satisfying?

A scruncheon is a small crisp piece of fried pork fat, and I admit this means it isn't going to be easy to ease the word into ordinary conversation, but, hey...it'll make the world a better place if we can, won't it.

The sun was so hot I practically got fried to a scruncheon.

The snow the dogs had weed on was exactly the colour of fine scruncheons.

Scruncheons
For luncheons
Put pork
On your fork.

Okay, I'm getting a bit desperate, here.

Scruncheons with fish and brewis.

Still, scruncheon.

It's just lovely, isn't it.

Word To Use Today: scruncheon. This word comes from Newfoundland, but otherwise it is a mystery.

Confused in black and white: a rant.

It's not easy making up new words.

The easiest way to do it is to put together a couple of old ones. This has the advantage that people will have a good chance of being able to guess the new word's meaning.

Cavepool, for instance. Or ovenproof. Or discoball.

You need to be careful, though.

Take this word. It's the name of a company.

Extremetech.

But what, you may ask (as I did) is a metech? And why would one want an extre one of them?

Extremetech's website makes it clear. There it's written:

EXTREMETECH.

And then it's as plain as black and...

...oh.

Sorry. Bad choice of phrase, there.

Word To Use Today: a word with tech in it, preferably one people will be able to understand. Tech comes from the Greek tekhnē, which means skill.

 

Nuts and Bolts: Nerdic.

Who speaks Nerdic?
 
Well, you do.
 
Nerdic has billions of speakers. It may even be the most widely-spoken language in the world.
 
I think that's hugely exciting.

What is it? Well, now we have the internet a word can travel round the world and establish itself more or less everywhere more or less at once.

And that's what's happening with many new words, especially those that are to do with technology.


"It's incredible that I can describe an N96 with HSDPA, Wi-Fi with a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss and GPS and be understood across Europe," said Stuart Miles of pocket-lint.com "although Brits may still be confused when they hear the French talking about their 'wee-fee'!"

Ah. So that's what they were on about.

I thought it was something to do with coin-operated lavatories.

 Language To Use Today: Nerdic. The word Nerdic seems to have been coined in 2008 by the Pixmania website. The first documented appearance of the word nerd is the creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), in which Gerald McGrew declares he will collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates back to 1951, when Newsweek magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for "drip" or "square" in Detroit, Michigan.

Thing To Do Today: be polled.

A referendum takes years and years to organise, so we can't do one of those today. But we could do a straw poll because that's practically instant.

Straw poll isn't a common expression in Britain, though it's well-known in the USA, Canada, and New Zealand. A straw poll more or less consists of saying hands up who thinks...and counting the results.

So: hands up who thinks that teachers should be required to smile at least three times every lesson - and not in a gloating, evil way, either.

Hands up who thinks that chocolate should be recognised as an essential part of the daily diet.

Hands up who thinks that tinned sardines have rights, too.

If so much thinking is too much all at once, and tends to make your head hurt, then be glad you aren't a cow: polling a cow involves taking its horns off, which would surely be even worse.

On the other hand if you're a sheep then to be polled might only mean to be sheared.

The important thing is to avoid being hit with a poll, which is the flat side of a hammer, especially on the poll, which, again if you're a cow or another grass-eating animal, is the back part of the head.

There's a special computer meaning of poll, too - something to do with automatically asking terminals if they're ready to send messages - but trying to understand that sort of stuff makes my head ache worst of all.

And anyway, you're not a computer.

Are you?

Thing To Do Today: be polled. This word comes from the Middle Low German polle, which means the hair of the head or the top of a tree.

Spot the Frippet: pollex.

Unless you know a word for something you can't think about it.

Or so some foolish people say.

That's clearly not true (what's the word for the taste of ice cream that's just beginning to melt at the edges in the sun?) but it's certainly true that knowing a word for something brings it to the attention.

I've never thought about pollices (neat plural, huh?), but now I realise they're all around me.

And what are they?

A pollex is a lizard's thumb.

Or a bird's thumb, for that matter; or a frog's, or a fox's.

Okay, birds and frogs and foxes and lizards don't actually have thumbs as we know them, but a pollux is the inside digit on the forelimb of any animal that has...er...well, digits on its forelimbs. (Yes, yes, I know birds don't have forelimbs: a bird's pollices are hidden inside its wings).

But the pollices of lots of animals are plainly visible.


A possum, displaying its pollices.

That goes for gorillas, dogs - and you, too.


Though this is a bonobo.

I feel rather pleased and proud, myself.

Spot the frippet. This is so easy that perhaps we ought to be spotting a pollex on a different species of animal from us. Pollex is the Latin for thumb.

Pollex gives us the lovely adjective pollical.