words words words

[corvi]

I've kept a list of all the new words I encountered during the past few weeks (or old words I encountered again but wasn't entirely sure about).

Most of them are very specific, single-purpose words (English has a word for injuring a horse with a horseshoe nail, apparently!) that I probably won't encounter again until the next time I'm reading about whatever it was, so it was kind of fun to jot them down as I went and review them now, instead of them just fading into the ether until next time.

• Sarcoline: flesh-coloured

• Apotropaic: ritual or object intended to repel malevolent supernatural forces

• Icejam: a river blocked by floating chunks of ice

• Mallemaroking: sailors partying while their ship is stuck in ice and they can't do anything else

• Adespota: anonymous works

• Bris-soleil: a built in sun shade, not like a curtain, like part of a building's architecture

• Cimarron: wild

• Nolition: the absence of volition, or the desire to do nothing

• Pullulate: to germinate, to swarm

• Knuckleball: in baseball, to throw a ball with no stabilizing spin, so that it is strongly affected by air turbulence and moves unpredictably

• Riprap: large stones or random recycled concrete chunks placed along shorelines to slow wave action

• Accropode: giant concrete, shaped like jacks, specifically manufactured to be riprap and absorb intense waves / help with tsunamis

• Sinoper: A reddish brown pigment made from hematite, also an under-sketch for painting (traditionally done in this pigment)

• Esemplastic: unifying disparate things into a whole

• Desire-path: path worn into the ground where lots of people step off the official path (shortcuts)

• Patzer: someone who is terrible at chess but plays it anyway

• Orphrey: a band of embroidery sewn onto something as a decoration

• Catenary: the type of curve made by a chain hanging between two points

• Alveated: a vault or arch shaped like the inside of a beehive

• Agelast: a person who never laughs

• Chordiod: a chord-like collection of notes that doesn't match any defined chord (usually a chord with some notes missing)

• Ashlar: Square cut stones use to build walls

• Nullibiety: the property of being nowhere or nonexistent

• Freudensprung: joy jumps made by a happy animal, like a rat

• Putlog: A beam that juts from a wall to hold up a roof or higher floor

• Sea-mew: awesome archaic word for seagull

• Oustiti: a tool used to reach under a door and unlock it from the inside

• Absonous: discordant, inharmonious

• Cryptobiotic: Can related to either extinct or hibernating lifeforms; evidence of unknown or unfindable organisms

• Creel: a wicker fishtrap

• Norsel: a short piece of fishing line used to tie various bits of fishing equipment together

• Gorbellied: fat (insulting, used by shakespeare)

• Namuktuk: good enough for now

• Kreng: the carcass of a whale after the blubber has been removed

• Roo: to pull wool off a sheep (for breeds who naturally shed)

• Alvar: a plain with very thing soil: grass interspersed with bare rock and lichen

• Coasteer: traveling along a rocky coast where it meets the sea by climbing, swimming, etc.

• Exomis: a clothing item with only one sleeve

• Kermes: a red pigment made from bugs (not cochineal, a different red pigment made from bugs)

• Hebetic: related to puberty

• Screed: to spread and even out a layer of clay or concrete

• Delope: in a duel, to fire a gun into the air and not try to hit the other guy (like if the dual has to happen because honor, but nobody wants to hurt anyone)

• Sifaka: a lemur of the Propithecus genus

• Ubac: the shady side of a mountain

• Adret: the sunny side of a mountain

• Apricate: to bask in the sun

• Contline: the space between the strands of a rope

• Daddock: rotten wood at the heart of a tree

• Druxy: having rotten pale spots or streaks (specifically of decaying wood)

• Crupper: strap that runs from the back of a saddle around a horse's tail

• Accloy: to injure a horse while shoeing it, by accidentally stabbing it with a horseshoe nail

• Hippocrepian: horseshoe-shaped

• Cardophage: a thistle-eating animal (like a goat)

• Apophenia: seeing spurious connections between unrelated things

• Shabble: an old rusty sword

• Stramazon: a downward cut in fencing

• Skiptrace: to locate someone (especially a fugitive)

• Cierge: a candle used in a ritual

• Scrutal: a trapdoor in a stage

• Solivagant: wandering alone

• Dital: a key on a musical instrument that raises the pitch of a string by a half-step (man, I have had a harp for decades and never know the names of these things!)

• Cimelia: a treasure in storage

• Fogle: a silk handkerchief

• Liripipe: the long dangly bit on a graduate hood

• Dreikanter: a pyramid-shaped pebble found in windy deserts, carved by wind

• Moonglade: moonlight reflected on water (I learned this as "moonpath" or "moonroad", and I'll keep using those, but moonglade is also an excellent word too!)