Realm of the Wombat

Odie started calling me ’sirrah’ on the train the other day. We figured it was the predecessor of ’sir,’ which turned out to be true. But ’sirrah’ holds a different connotation, according to dictionary.com:

–noun Archaic.
a term of address used to inferiors or children to express impatience, contempt, etc.

Origin: 1520–30; extended form of sir; source of final vowel is unclear

As I recently learned from Mental Floss, “arachibutyrophobia” is a word. According to dictionary.com it is:

noun
a fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth

Is this really a condition? Even if it is, does it need a specific word to describe it? This is a general problem: most phobias don’t deserve to have a term defined for them. I understand having words for the fear of heights or fear of spiders. Those are natural, evolutionary survival responses. But do we need a word for the fear of flutes (aulophobia)? Or the fear of sitting down (kathisophobia)? Defining terms for these conditions removes their irrationality. Someone who is afraid of flutes does not need validation; the person needs help, or at least the shaming that comes from saying the words, “I am afraid of flutes.”

Check out this list of phobias for hundreds of other words we don’t need. Except for scabiophobia. Let’s keep that one.

George Washington used the word “panegyric” in a humble reply to a poem dedicated to him by Phillis Wheatley at the outset of the Revolutionary War. From dictionary.com:

noun
1. a lofty oration or writing in praise of a person or thing; eulogy.
2. formal or elaborate praise.

Here’s an exchange that recently transpired:

Labmate: Are you rooting for the Rockies in the playoffs?
Our Hero: Yes. They’re the most innocuous team left.
Labmate: Innocuous?

That’s a prompt for some learning action. Here’s the entry from Webster:

adjective
1 : producing no injury
2 : not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings or hostility

That #2 definition perfectly describes the Rockies.

In his article in the latest Newsweek about Al Gore and Bill Bradley, Jonathan Alter used the word “jeremiad.” This piqued my interest, as you might expect. I should have guessed the etymology as biblical and hence the meaning. Here’s the listing from dictionary.com:

noun
a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.

If I ever decide to change the name of this site, it sounds like a good alternative.

I had never heard the word “bailiwick” before a month ago. Then it appeared throughout The Cuckoo’s Egg and as the name of a theater in Lakeview, the Bailiwick Repertory Theater. I figured I should look it up.

noun
1. the district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.
2. a person’s area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one’s own bailiwick.

Learning… It’s great!

“Factotum” first appeared in the Jack Black classic School of Rock. It since graduated to a movie of its own, starring Matt Dillon. That was the tipping point for me to look it up.

noun
1. a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house.
2. any employee or official having many different responsibilities.

The band Camera Obscura was described as “dulcet” by Morning Becomes Eclectic. Since it’s been a while since I increased everyone’s vocabulary, I thought I’d post it.

dulcet - adjective
1. pleasant to the ear; melodious
2. pleasant or agreeable to the eye or the feelings; soothing

Scholars of romance languages will guess the etymology:

Alteration (influenced by Latin dulcis), of Middle English doucet from Old French, diminutive of douce feminine of doux (sweet) from Latin dulcis.

Thanks dictionary.com!

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the chemistry library lately. There’s a dictionary there which apparently hasn’t been used in the last month. How do I know? Because “redingote” is the feature word every day.

If I didn’t learn anything else in the library, at least I’ve got redingote in my vocabulary.

What’s a cupola?

Find out the answer…

Mel and I were talking about the word “whippersnapper” the other day. She thought the term was “whimpersnapper,” which apparently is a common mistake. After getting her straightened out on that point, I was wondering what the origin of this word is. It seems natural that “whippersnapper” would be derived from “whipsnapper”, but it’s unclear how that came to be used by elders referring to unruly youth.

There seem to be two opinions on the matter. Dictionary.com claims that it’s a derivative of “snipper-snapper,” but I haven’t found any mention of this term independent of whippersnapper. The Online Etymology Dictionary offers both snipper-snapper and whip-snapper as precursors, but their relationship to the meaning still doesn’t make sense to me.

Ok, this is something I probably should have been able to figure out without the help of the internets, but today, PBR said “niner,” and I started wondering why pilot types say nine that way. “Niner” is the pronunciation of nine in the unambiguous NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Other numbers with designations other than their english pronunciations are three (”tree”) and five (”fife”).

The Wikipedia page has many more interesting facts about the NATO phonetic alphabet.