More Words Beginning with E...

Let's go quickly. 8. You can buy echelette spectographs, but I think I would have to study a great deal more to understand the definition: "a reflection grating made by ruling parallel V-shaped grooves..." It comes from the French word for ladder. 9. Echelonment was selected because of the confusion sometimes in French-derived words of whether there is an "e" before the "ment." For example, debouchment doesn't have the "e," while eclaircissement (an explanation) does. Debridement does. Echelonment is the placing of troops in formation so that supplies have uninterrupted flow to the front. 10. Eciton (EH si tin) is, get this, a genus of blind polymorphic ants. You don't have to be a myrmecologist to find these pictures interesting. 11. Eboulement (A boul mah) means a landslide. 12. An ecanda is a tropical African vine. This web site says that sources from which rubber is commercially obtained are the Guayule plant (Parthenium argentatum) of Mexico and the "Ecanda" plant of Portuguese W. Africa, which is known as the Raphionacme utilis. 13. I guess I love eccoprotic a little too much. It means "producing evacuation of the bowels; mildly purgative." In a noun form it is a "mild aperient" (the Latin root behind "aperient" means "to open"). From 1806: "Eccoprotics used occasionally, so as just to prevent costiveness." Good words there.

14. An eaceworm is nothing other than an earthworm. This is the pronunciation, however, in certain places in Rhode Island and W. MA. Does it need an entry in the Unabridged for this? 15. An ebauchoir is a chisel to roughhew sculpture. I love the pronunciation-- a (long sound) bosh (long sound) WAR. I hope it comes up someday and I get it, for I will certainly hit it out of the park. 16. Karl J. Eberth was a German bacteriologist who died in 1926, not before, however, giving his name to a genus of acrobic bacteria--the eberthella. 17. Echimyine is a quite complex word that is built off echimys, coming from the Greek echinos (hedgehog) and mys (mouse). Thus an echimys is genus of rodents. The dictionary calls them hystricomorph rodents. The word hystrix is the Greek word for porcupine. Even though the word hystricine doesn't appear in my dictionaries, I think it is clear what it means--"prickly." Hystricism is not porcupines engaging in mystical endeavors; it is "the porcupine disease," an extreme form of ichthyosis, where the the skin is covered with horny prominences. I hope I never experience the word.

Getting Near the End

I will skip a few, but still we have many nice ones. 18. An echinoparyphium is a genus of digenetic trematodes infesting the small intestine of waterfowl, domestic poultry and even humans. 19. An echis is a genus of vipers from Africa. You can tell that mastery of the Linnaean system would be immensely helpful in our task of learning "all the words." 20. Eclegma, like electuary, is a syrup on licorice root sucked in order to get rid of a cough. The OED has it as the obsolete word eclegme, derived from the Greek word for "to lick out." 21. An eclosion is a hatching from an egg. 22. Ecorche is a great word--derived from the French meaning "to flay" or "to peel," it is an anatomical figure with the skin "flayed away" and only the musculature or bones visible. Ecorche figures are the essence of Von Hagen's Body Worlds exhibit. 23. I wish I had time to go into ecossaise, which the Unabridged says if from Ecosse, the French word for Scotland, and means a slow dance in three-quarter time. Alternatively, the dictionary says it means a lively dance. Can't you see that someone ought to clarify the history of this word?

24. Ecrevisse is another one of the thousands of French-derived words in our dictionary, and it means the crayfish. I never knew it until now, but Louisiana Ecrevisse is a freshwater aquaculture consulting and publications service, specialzing in warmwater, freshwater crawfishes. I suppose that such an organization wouldn't be headquartered in North Dakota... 25. Ecribellate means "without a cribellum." 26. Ecstasis and 27. ecstasiate have nothing to do with each other, but I like the sound of each, and so I give them to you. The latter means to make ecstatic or to cause to go into rapture. "She was ecstasiated by the news of her acceptance into the graduate program." Ectasis, however, means "stretching" and is the lengthening of a short syllable. It can also be known as diastole or even dilatation. It is another one of those words which probably has little use in English because its original reference was to Latin and Greek poetry, but, as I have said previously, if you learn enough irrelevant information, you will sooner or later be sought out for your wisdom.

Conclusion--Five More

These two essays are already enough for a real feast, but let's mention a few more words: 28. Eimeria, named after the German zooligist Theodor Eimer (d. 1898) refers to a genus of coccidia invading the intestinal wall of many vertebrates. 29. Ehatisaht is useless in this spelling, which occurs in the Unabridged, because there are 3X the number of appearances of ehattesaht in Google. It refers to a small (fewer than 1000) community of native Americans in British Columbia. I suppose that learning all the geographical regions of the world, as well as the names of "beings animalculous" as Pirates of Penzance says, as well as mineral names and then, as here, linguistic or ethnic group names would certainly be quite a badge of honor to wear... 30. Ehuawa is a sedge (Cyperus laevigatus) from HI. 31. An egocerus (accent on second syllable) is a "hippotragus," which turns out to be an antelope, of which there are tons of pictures online. Eglomise (four syllables) is a process of painting on the "back" of glass, named after an 18th century Frenchman named Glomy. I can't figure out what is the front and back of glass, however, so someone is going to have to hold my hand someday and make this process very easy for me to understand. The German is eglomisiert; the Italian is agglomizzato. It is great to know a think in four languages and not know the thing itself.

32. An ecthyma is a skin eruption. 33. Edreobenthos refers to sedentary organisms of the benthos, such as rock oysters. Confusion can proliferate here, not on the derivation of the word (hedra is a seat in Greece), but because other living things sounding the same in the first three syllables are spelled edrio--such as edrioopthalmata; edrioasteroidea, etc. I hope not to get hung up here some day.

Let's call it quits, hoping that we never run into the few words from the previous list which I haven't defined for us.

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