merriam webster collegiate dictionary

Make no mistake about it. We are now into serious dullness, serious plowing through unattractive scientific terms that no doubt have significance to some people in the world but don't have much resonance with me. When faced with such a reality, I want to begin with a word that I like. It actually isn't in the Collegiate; I had to go to the OED for it: acathisia. It has an alternative spelling: akathisia. I am sure you were probably relieved to know that. The word is derived from the Greek, and means "inabilty to sit" or "morbid fear of sitting." I can't imagine a person to whom this applies, but I am sure there are some people who have suffer from long-standing akathisia. On to the words.

The "Ac's"

Here are some of the words I found myself writing down. An ackee is the fruit of a soapberry tree, whereas acoelomate (The "coel" is pronounced "seel") is something without a body cavity. You can see how I am struggling already. An acritarch is a one-celled planktonic organism (glad you know?) while acrylamide is an amide from acrylic acid. An actinian is a sea anenome while actinium is a radioactive element. Finally, we are back to something that lives with addax, a light-colored Saharan antelope. There are lots of "adenos" such as adenine, adenitis, adenohypophysis and adenylate. It leaves my brain a bit addled to be sure, and I am somewhat eager to use some action figure (word coined in 1987) against anyone who makes me study too much more of this. I am glad, however, that because of the feminist revolution we now have an ad feminam as well as an ad hominem argument--an attack on a person's character rather than on the argument being made. I am happy we got that straight, even though the word man to refer to a woman has returned with vengeance in the area where women were supposed to declare their independence. Where is that? Women's sports. Listen to the women's basketball coach shout to her players: "Everyone on your man!" And, this is NOT co-ed basketball.

Ok, got to get back to the serious words. Then there is adiabatic, which may even be useful (without loss or gain of heat), and I bet you could even get sympathy in a group if you introduced yourself as adiabatic, though it would leave me neither hot nor cold. An adit is a horizontal passageway or entrance, especially into a mine. I skipped adiaphora because I know the word too well, but it is a great term to describe "things indifferent" in an ethical or theological system (i.e., it is probably theologically unimportant whether you drive a Mazda or a Honda). Adjuvant means helping, as is easily evident from the word, and an example of it is: "the value of philology as an adjuvant to ethnology." I wanted to make sure I learned this word, too, because I made a dumb mistake in the Oregon bee in spelling ululant. I spelled it ululent. Thus, when I am tired or not focusing I can tend to write "ent" for "ant." I won't do that now for adjuvant. I don't want some pissent (oops, pissant) word tripping me. An adobo is a Philippine dish of fish, or something like that.

A Few Interesting Words

Then I ran into a word that I hadn't previously heard but I felt I should have heard: adscititious. Well, got to look at it one syllable at a time. "Ad" means "toward." Then there is "sciscere" meaning to "acknowledge, approve by vote." Something adscititious is "assumed, adopted from without...supplemental; additional." Bacon (1620) could say, "They therefore called this [motion] perpetual and proper..and they called the others adscititious. An adscititious habit is one "contracted by institution, discipline and custom," rather than something inherent or developing from within. But the psychological process seems like it might be more complex that this. Often something that seemingly is adopted from outside becomes so much a part of us that it truly seems inherent. I also wondered whether adscititious and adventitious were synonyms, since the first definition of the latter in the Collegiate is "coming from another source and not inherent or innate." I will have to put off my adventure in words for a while because of the need to emphasize spelling.

Then I returned to adust (having a sunburned appearance) and advertorial, which is an advertisement that imitates editorial format (coined 1946). I was disappointed, however, that the Collegiate didn't have one other "combination" term that the OED has--anonymuncule. Oh well, the Collegiate has the word adnexa instead, which means "conjoined."

Finishing Up

I know I had better learn ae (pronounced long "a") meaning "one." Those very short Scottish words can get me into trouble. Under the "ae's" then we have a genus of mosquito, aedes, some kind of elephant bird, aepyornis, and an aerodynamicist. I like the word aery, which needs to be distinguished from aerie. I first ran into the latter in a legal case I was handling, having to do with a fraternal society which divides its units into aeries, secluded dwellings for birds. Yet the word aery means "ethereal." I wonder, really, if there is that much difference. Ah, the OED defines the meaning of aery as etherial, which suggests that we might not only not be able to agree on the spelling of the word under consideration but also of the definition of the word. I think the OED formed its word (etherial) by imitation of aerial. Aren't we just descending into the pit of hopeless relativism? Isn't it true that the best speller is not necessarily a smart person but has just learned to "mind his manners" best of all, since a spelling judge might be no more than an arbiter elegantiarum (another nice phrase from the Collegiate)? Ok, I think that when I am getting into this mood that I need to take a deep breath, as a friend of mine would say, and come back to this in a few minutes.

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