acapnotic
n. a nonsmoker
Language
In a Word
immerd
v. to cover with excrement
In a Word
ombibulous
adj. drinking everything
Quick Brown Fox
I sang, and thought I sang very well; but he just looked up into my face with a very quizzical expression, and said, “How long have you been singing, Mademoiselle?”
That’s from Lillie de Hagermann-Lindencrone’s 1912 book In the Courts of Memory. What’s remarkable about it? This section:
I sang, and thought I sang very well; but he just looked up into my face with a very quizzical expression, and said, “How long have you been singing, Mademoiselle?”
… contains all 26 letters of the alphabet.
At 56 letters, it’s the shortest known example of a “pangrammatic window.”
In a Word
obsolagnium
n. waning sexual desire due to age
In a Word
epicaricacy
n. taking pleasure in others’ misfortune
Aptronyms
A aptronym is a name that is aptly suited to its owner’s occupation. Examples:
- Sally Ride, astronaut
- William Wordsworth, poet
- Margaret Court and Anna Smashnova, tennis players
- John Tory, leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party
- Learned Hand, judge
- Larry Speakes, Ronald Reagan’s press secretary
- Chuck Long and Willie Thrower, NFL quarterbacks
And Joe Strummer, guitarist for The Clash.
In a Word
cacozelia
n. the use of rare or foreign words to appear learned
In a Word
tegestologist
n. a collector of beer mats
Shibboleth
Isaac Asimov proposed a simple way to distinguish chemists from non-chemists: Ask them to read aloud the word unionized.
Non-chemists will pronounce it “union-ized”, he said — and chemists will pronounce it “un-ionized.”