More New Free Rice Words II

Most of the words remaining from the previous essay are not the most exciting words in the dictionary, but if there is one thing I have learned in life, if you would be successful, you have to develop a means of managing boredom. I don't intentionally try to contribute to the quantity of boredom in the world; but sometimes it is rather hard to be scintillating...

5. Chivy/chevy. Though the Free Rice web site defined the word as "harass," the dictionaries focus on the meaning of "chase" or "run in pursuit." The verb and noun are derived from an old story, told in the "Ballad of Chevy Chase" (more than one exists) about a hunting party, a "chase," in the Cheviot Hills between England and Scotland. The Scots interpreted it as an attack on Scotland, and all hell then broke loose as they tried to ward it off. Thus, this Cheviot Hills "chase" was called the "Chevy Chase." Chevy, also spelled chivy, is both a noun and a verb. As a former it means a chase, pursuit, hunt or hunting cry, while as a verb it means to chase or pursue. It sort of makes a redundancy, doesn't it (a "chase chase")? But that is what the word means, and you now can use it at your peril...

6. Ligroin. Its etymology is unknown, and it first appeared in English in 1881 to mean "any of various naphtha fractions with ranges of boiling points between 90 and 150 degrees C, used as solvents. From 1881: "The author has investigated the causes of explosions resulting from the products of the distillation of mineral naphtha when used for burning purposes. These products are known as 'gasoline,' 'benzoline,' 'ligroin,' and 'lubricating oil.'" Now it seems to be known as petroleum ether, which is a group of volatile, highly flammable, liquid hydrocarbon mixtures used for nonpolar solvents. Ah, yes, I will return to chemistry as soon as I get some "words essays" out of my system...Determining the composition of ligroin from petroleum of crude oil deposits around the world is a common task.

7. Metheglin is the Welsh word for "mead," a drink consisting of a mixture of many ingredients. From this 1620 quotation we have: "Rosemary, Hyssop, Time (thyme?), Orgaine, and Sage, be first well boyled in the water, whereof you make the Metheglin, it will be the better." Another quotation defines it as "diluted alcohol sweetened with honey." I suppose any Welsh 2nd grader would know the term...

8. A palmer is a pilgrim. The word derives from the post-classical Latin palmarius, one esp. returned from the Holy Land. I suppose that such a person might carry palms with him as a sign of successfully completing the pilgrimage, as well as a memento of the journey. Hence the name. Simon Schama, one of our best historians today, had this to say in 1995: "The ostentatious poverty and simplicity in which Taylor cloaked himself suggested the innocence of the medieval palmers." We also have the "palmer-worm," and the explanation for their name is found in this 1608 quotation: "There is another sort of these Catterpillers, who have no certaine place of abode, nor yet cannot tell wehre to find theyr foode, but like unto superstitituos Pilgrims, doe wander and stray hither and thither,...and these have purchased a very apt name amongst us Englishment, to be called Palmer-wormes, by reason of their wandering and rogish life (for they never stay in one place, but are ever wandering." Nice to have some historical perspective.

9. I don't really like a word like nostoc because it can be spelled so many ways, it is uncertain whether the word was first coined in Latin or English, and has a definition that doesn't quickly tell me what it is. According to the OED it is a "gelatinous mass consisting of filamentous colonies of cyanobacteria of the genus Nostoc.." Paracelsus, from the 16th century, may have been the first one to use the term. Nostoc is abundant in moist places and, as the Century informs us, "from their sudden appearance after rains in summer they have been called witches'-butter, fallen stars, spittle-of-the-stars, etc." Such an understanding is reflected in this 1702 quotation: "A bottle of Nostock...called Star Slough, or Star Shot Gelly,...a substance that falls from the starrs." And I thought that money grew on trees and fell from the sky.

10. Finally, let's conclude this essay with gride. The word is primarily a verb, usually appearing only in poetry, if the OED can be trusted on this one. It means, first of all, to pierce with a weapon or wound, but it can also mean "to cut, scrape or graze along, through, up, etc. with a strident, grating or whizzing sound, or so as to cause intense rasping pain." From the Faerie Queen, "Through his thigh the morall steele did gryde." Or, more recently, "The horrible rope fell on him, griding across his back." Tennyson could write:

"The wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns/ Together.."

I think I will begin to use the word instead of "grate" or "grind."

Conclusion--Two Bonus Words

If you have followed me thus far, I think you should be "rewarded" by two other words. The first was invented by the Indo-European linguist Max Muller, and was picked up by no-one. Yet, the OED, perhaps under the sway of Muller when the first edition was completed more than 100 years ago, decided to include adevism. Muller invented the term to describe a disbelief in the lgendary deities or deity, as distinguished from atheism, which is a disbelief in God. It was applied to Indian (i.e., South Asian) religion, and made up of the alpha privative followed by "deva," the Sanskrit word for "god." Almost a completely useless term, don't you think?

But clathrate isn't useless. It is primarily used in chemistry and botany; in the latter it denotes something "resembling lattice-work" (the Greek word "kleithra" means "a lattice"); in chemistry it means "designating or relating to a molecular compound in which one component is enclosed within the crystals of another." I like an alternative word given in the OED: cancellate, which means "marked with cross lines like lattice-work; reticulated." You see how the words keep coming at us, and they almost beg us to use them with wisdom and care.

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