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stonepicnicking_okapi

ambigram [am-bə-ˌgram]

noun

1. something (such as an image of a written word or phrase) that is intended or able to be oriented in either of two ways for viewing or reading

examples
1. The extremely cool ambigram on the cover of the book is what initially intrigued me and led me to pick the book up when I found it on my parents' bookshelf. Angels and Demons Teaser Trailer | /Film 2008

2. The Princess Bride title art is an ambigram.
(20th anniversary collector's edition)

origin
The word was introduced by the author and cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter (born 1945) in chapter 13 of the book Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York, 1985).

ambi- + -gram

ambi

a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin, meaning “both” and “around”

gram

a combining form occurring in loanwords from Greek, where it meant “something written,” “drawing"

[Wordsmith's Note: I have seen tattoos with these, but I didn't know there was a name for it.}

stonepicnicking_okapi

xenium ['zēnēəm]

(plural: xenia)

1. a present given among the ancient Greeks and Romans to a guest or stranger and especially to a foreign ambassador

2. gift sometimes given compulsorily to medieval rulers and churches

origin
Latin, from Greek xenion, from neuter of xenios of hospitality, xenial

examples
1. Though it falls into a fairly common category of images of food called “xenia” — offerings for guests — it is not like most of the roughly 300 examples that have been found in Vesuvian cities. NYT 6/27/23

2. Unless you are one of those unbalanced individuals who actually enjoys having company, I would recommend giving a xenium, such as a pair of used socks, something that says ‘Here is a gift – please go away.’
January Magazine

Jupiter_and_Mercury_at_Philemon_and_Baucis by Rubens workshop (Zeus and Hermes are testing a village's hospitality)

stonepicnicking_okapi

chatoyant [SHəˈtoiənt]

adjective

1. (gems) having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light
2. having a changeable color or luster

origin
French, from present participle of chatoyer to shine like a cat's eyes

examples
1. Either because they possessed a chatoyant quality of their own (as I had often suspected), or by reason of the light reflected through the open window, the green eyes gleamed upon me vividly like those of a giant cat.
The Devil Doctor Sax Rohmer 1921

2. The faint eery light that glowed in the stranger’s deep-set eyes was not the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant orbs of some night-prowling jungle beast.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931

Spudger - noun.

Ah, the spudger just another whatsis and doohickey for an IT person's junk drawer! It's a tool used for opening and replacing small components such as batteries, without damaging parts. Allegedly, the origin of the name is spuddle, a Middle English word for "short knife".

By Michael Anderson - Own work, Public Domain, Link

stonepicnicking_okapi

quincunx [kwing-kuhngks]

noun
1. an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its center, used for the five on dice or playing cards, and in planting trees.
2. (astrology) an aspect of 150°, equivalent to five zodiacal signs.
3. (botany) an overlapping arrangement of five petals or leaves, in which two are interior, two are exterior, and one is partly interior and partly exterior.

examples
1. Others plant them in form of a quincunx, which is better for the hop, and will do very well where your ground is but small that you may overcome it with either the breast plough or spade.
A Short History of English Agriculture 1893
2. On October 4, Venus and Jupiter meet up in a quirky quincunx, offering us the opportunity to gain perspective on society, self-worth and our ability to give and receive love.
Aries Full Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon 2009

origins
1640–50; < Latin: five twelfths (quinc-, variant of quīnque- quinque- + uncia twelfth; ounce); originally a Roman coin worth five twelfths of a libra and marked with a quincunx of spots

And if you like a good ghost story:

Watch on YouTube

stonepicnicking_okapi

quondam [ˈkwändəm, ˈkwänˌdam, ˈkwänˌdäm]

adjective
that once was, former

examples
1.By coincidence, the same day that Reichstag burned, Einstein wrote to his quondam mistress, Margarete Lenbach.
—Thomas Levenson, The Atlantic, 9 June 2017
2. Amongst all my fellow clerks I remember one only who resembled as a borrower some of my quondam associates at Derby.
Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland by Joseph Tatlow
3. The quondam midwife, with tears in her eyes, looked at her, and blessed the moment she had done a generous act.
The Science of Fairy Tales by Edwin Sidney Hartland

origin
Latin, at one time, formerly, from quom, cum when; akin to Latin qui who

seashell print by Knorr 18th century. it reads:
Ex Museo quondam Breyniano
sea shells

sea shells

stonepicnicking_okapi

mixtape [miks-teyp]

Noun.

1. noncommercial compilation of songs copied (as onto a cassette tape or a CD) from various sources
2. an album that is usually recorded and distributed without the involvement of a record label

Examples

In high school, I'd be making mixtapes for friends and girls instead of doing my homework, spending hours perfecting how a Smiths song and Joy Division song and Pixies song would convey the way I feel.
—Aaron Axelsen, quoted at SFGate.com
Writers like Nick Hornby have imbued the cassette tape with considerable romance, in particular the mix tape created for a loved one. In practice, these were often recorded directly from the radio, requiring your typical suburban suitor to sit around for hours on end, waiting for the desired track to appear.
—Richard Glover
The mixtape is an unofficial release. It might be tied to an imprint or a label, but it doesn't necessarily appear in stores. In fact, most of them can be purchased only on the streets, at the clubs, from the trunks of cars or from the artists themselves.
—Lance Scott Walker
Long before rap got any radio love, mixtapes were the main form of distribution, the currency that kept everything in rotation as the culture evolved.
—Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael

Origins

The word “mixtape” was first used in 1985. However, the phrase “mix tape” appeared earlier, in 1974, in Modern Recording Techniques by Robert E. Runstein. The phrase became so common that it was eventually shortened to the unhyphenated word “mixtape”.
The word “mixtape” is a combination of the words “mix” and “tape”. “Mix” comes from the Latin word mixtus, and “tape” comes from the Old English word tæppe, which means “strip (of cloth)”.

mixtape

mixtape

stonepicnicking_okapi

campanile [ kam-puh-nee-lee, -neel; Italian kahm-pah-nee-le]

noun:

1. a bell tower, especially one freestanding from the body of a church.

examples
1. The campanile is three arched on all four sides, whereas the one in the picture is two arched.
Contest: Identify This Spot 2004
2. Mamma's lunch was spoiled because, in pronouncing "campanile" for the first time, she rhymed it with the river Nile, and realized what she had done when some one else soon after inadvertently said it in the right way. My Friend the Chauffeur Frederic [Illustrator] Lowenheim 1901
3. Its slender campanile looms strikingly over the surrounding neighborhood.
Catholic Cleveland: Historic Church Saved, But Others Still in Danger 2009

origin
1630–40; < Italian, equivalent to campan ( a ) bell (< Late Latin, probably noun use of Latin Campāna, feminine singular or neuter plural of Campānus of Campania, reputed to be a source of high-quality bronze casting in antiquity) + -ile locative suffix (< Latin -īle )

Campanile, Sant' Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, Italy, 6th century

capanile

capanile

stonepicnicking_okapi

tourbillion

[toor-bil-yuhn; toor-bee--yawn]

noun

1. whirlwind sense
2. a vortex especially of a whirlwind or whirlpool
3. watch mechanism: A mechanism in a watch that rotates the balance wheel, balance spring, and escapement to reduce the effects of gravity on the watch's movement. The rotating cage that holds these parts rotates at a rate of about one revolution per minute. The tourbillon was invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet and patented in 1801. Tourbillons are often displayed on the face of modern wristwatches.
4. firework: a sky rocket with a spiral flight

example

1.
The watch is also the first edition to feature a double-hairspring tourbillion movement in a Streamliner case. —Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 23 Sep. 2022
2. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbours have called a tourbillon, but never on such a scale as this. --Tales of Terror and Mystery Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

origin
Anglo-French turbeillun, from Latin turbin-, turbo top, whirlwind, whirl, from turba confusion

stonepicnicking_okapi

palpebral [pal-ˈpē-brəl]

adjective
1. of, relating to, or located on or near the eyelids

origin
Late Latin palpebralis, from Latin palpebra eyelid; akin to Latin palpare

examples

1. Preserved in its eye sockets were palpebral bones - or eyelid bones - a feature absent in today's amphibians. (Fox News, 22 Mar. 2024)
2.The team discovered the skull has palpebral bones, or eyelid bones. (Mary Kekatos, ABC News, 22 Mar. 2024)

pumpkin spice eyeshadow

pumpkin spice eyeshadow

stonepicnicking_okapi

iatric [ahy-a-trik, ee-a-trik]

adjective
1. of or relating to a physician or medicine; medical

origins
1850–55; < Greek iātrikós of healing, equivalent to iātr ( ós ) healer ( iatro- ) + -ikos -ic

examples
1. My husband laughed in his unkind iatric way at a friend of mine who had said, `If anything should happen to me. . . . ' June 17, 2000 Spectator

2. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana specifically permit iatric euthanasia. Kevorkian: The Right to Die and Other 9th Amendment Freedoms 2009

3. 'You have an exorbitant auditory impediment,' replied the doctor, ever conscious of the necessity for maintaining a certain iatric mystique, and fully aware that 'a pea in the ear 'was unlikely to earn him any kudos. Captain Corelli's Mandolin De Bernieres, Louis, 2003

stonepicnicking_okapi

hardscrabble [härdskrab(ə)l]

adjective (North American)
1. a. being or relating to a place of barren or barely arable soil
1. b. getting a meager living from poor soil
2. marked by poverty

Examples:
Milo is a savvy, hardscrabble Ethiopian Irish computer-science grad student loyal to a crew of rough friends.
—Randy Boyagoda, The Atlantic, 16 Aug. 2024

The race covers the 58th district, which is historically Democratic and includes the hardscrabble Thompsonville section of working-class citizens east of the Connecticut River and west of Interstate 91.
—Christopher Keating, Hartford Courant, 12 Aug. 2024

Rose, a product of the city’s hardscrabble west side, was a man of average physical gifts who propelled himself to unparalleled athletic heights and a mythic status hard to imagine for a baseball player today.
—Brandon Harris, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2024

What makes the claim believable is its specificity — page numbers and all — and the fact Vance’s memoir was lauded as a heartfelt, unvarnished coming-of-age tell-all about his hardscrabble Appalachian childhood.
—Allen Salkin, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 July 2024

Origins: An Americanism dating back to 1795–1805; hard + scrabble

Not to be confused with this:

scrabble

stonepicnicking_okapi

halcyon [hal-see-uhn ]

adjective:
1. characterized by happiness, great success, and prosperity: golden —often used to describe an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today
2. calm, peaceful
3. prosperous, affluent

Examples:
Classics Illustrated have become pricey nostalgia items for those who grew up in the supposedly halcyon years after World War II.
—Donna Richardson
In those halcyon days of the free trade, the fixed price for carrying a box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway to Edinburgh was fifteen shillings …
—Sir Walter Scott

Origin:

From Latin halcyon from Greek halkyon, meaning "kingfisher"; from hals "the sea" + kuo, "to brood on."

Ancients believed the kingfisher laid its eggs on the surface of the sea and incubated them for two weeks, called "the halcyon days," during whihc, according to tradition, the waves awere always unruffled; hence, the expression halcyon days to describe a serene time.

Kingfisher

kingfisher

stonepicnicking_okapi

guttiform [guht-uh-fawrm ]

adjective
1. shaped like a drop

examples
1. The slow drip froze and thawed alternately, leading to guttiform shapes that gradually covered the entire surface.
2. While earlier work has typically scored scale shape qualitatively (e.g. circular, oval, elongated, guttiform), it would be opportune for future comparative studies to make use of modern methods to quantify shape, such as the EFA described in the present study to precisely quantify interspecific shape variation and increase statistical power. Ontogenetic scaling patterns of lizard skin surface structure as revealed by gel-based stereo-profilometry (2019)

origin
probably from (assumed) New Latin guttiformis, from New Latin gutti- (from Latin gutta drop) + Latin -formis -form

stonepicnicking_okapi

festinate [fe-stə-nət]

adjective

1. hasty, hurried.

origin

First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin festīnātus “hurried,” past participle of festināre

Example

Advise the duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation.
King Lear, Shakespeare, Act 3, Scene 7

Illustrator HC Selous. Act 3. Scene 7. King Lear.
lear

lear

jiggery-pokery [ jig-uh-ree-poh-kuh-ree]

noun:
(Cheifly British)
1 trickery, hocus-pocus; fraud; humbug
2 sly, underhanded action
3 manipulation

Examples:

For all the corrugated iron sheep, dogs, cows, parrots, cockatoos and chooks that populate Michael Scott-Mitchell's witty, fully corrugated set, for all the jiggery-pokery and quackery-knackery, Donizetti's glorious score emerges with clarity and humour. (Michael Shmith, Opera Review: The Elixir of Love, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 2015)

Is Emera really funding all this excess executive compensation out of its own 'unrelated' revenues and/or out of the goodness of its generous corporate heart? Or is this just more corporate obfuscation, jiggery-pokery, and sleight of hand? (Stephen Kimber, Nova Scotia Power rate increase: just more corporate obfuscation, jiggery-pokery and sleight of hand, Halifax Examiner, June 2022)

But I fear that any plan to run a single anti-Brexit candidate in a constituency would be met with a plan to run a single pro-Brexit candidate. Jiggery-pokery would be fought with jiggery-pokery. (Euan McColm, Electoral pacts can't stop no-deal juggernaut, The Scotsman, August 2019)

You don't think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! (H G Wells, Twelve Stories and a Dream)

Didn't I go into the room? Wasn't he there with the deceased? Wasn't his revolver found? Hadn't there been some jiggery-pokery with his books in London? (Edgar Wallace, The Man Who Knew)

Origin:

The charm of jiggery-pokery lies partly in its bouncing rhythm, a classic example of what's called a double dactyl, a dactyl being a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables; dactyl is named after the Greek word for finger, whose joints represent the three syllables. Other examples of double dactyls are higgledy-piggledy and idiosyncrasy.

The word appears at the end of the nineteenth century and is first recorded in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire dialect. The English Dialect Dictionary quotes an Oxford example, "I was fair took in with that fellow's jiggery-pokery over that pony." The experts are sure that it actually comes from a Scots phrase of the seventeenth century, joukery-pawkery.

The first bit of it means underhand dealing, from a verb of obscure origin, jouk, that means to dodge or skulk; this might be linked to jink and to the American football term juke, to make a move that's intended to deceive an opponent (the other juke, as in jukebox, has a different origin). The second bit is from pawky, a Scottish and Northern English word that can mean artful, sly, or shrewd, though it often turns up in the sense of a sardonic sense of humour. (World Wide Words)

stonepicnicking_okapi

ferruginous

adjective

[fuh-roo-juh-nuhs]

1. geology iron-bearing

2. of the color of iron rust

origin
1655–65; < Latin ferrūginus rust-colored, derivative of ferrūgin-, stem of ferrūgō iron-rust, derivative of ferrum iron; -ous

examples

1. A concretion of rounded quartz pebbles, cemented by ferruginous matter, apparently of recent formation.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2]
Performed between the years 1818 and 1822

2. He taught him how to clean letterpress and engravings from ferruginous, fungous, and other kinds of spots.

The Home of the Blizzard by Douglas Mawson

3. From nose to tail it measures about eighteen inches, and its general colour is a pale ferruginous brown, mixed with gray.

The Desert. From the French of Arthur Mangin. 1869.

Binary Mandala by David Lobdell, cast iron & steel

iron sculpture

iron sculpture

stonepicnicking_okapi

fictile

[fikt(ə)l, ˈfikˌtīl]

adjective

1. made of earth or clay by a potter.
2. relating to pottery or its manufacture.
3. capable of being molded; plastic.

origin
early 17th century: from Latin fictilis, from fict- ‘formed, contrived’, from the verb fingere

examples

Examples of this kind of weaving may be obtained from the fictile remains of nearly all the Atlantic States.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION—BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. PREHISTORIC TEXTILE FABRICS OF THE UNITED STATES,
DERIVED FROM IMPRESSIONS ON POTTERY. WILLIAM H. HOLMES.

Other productions of the Company are the egg-shell specimens of fictile ware, which demand the most artistic skill of the potter.

The Rivers of Great Britain: Rivers of the East Coast.

fictile

fictile

stonepicnicking_okapi

favonian [fuh-voh-nee-uhn ]

adjective
1.of or relating to the west wind.
2. mild or favorable; propitious.

examples
“A face, a favonian little face hovers in his memory, slipping in and out of focus.”
Natalee Caple; Mackerel Sky; St. Martin’s Press; 2004.

The preacher went about within his church, opening all the windows in hope, he said, of attracting favonian zephyrs laden with the aromas of spring. The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives for the Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene Ehrlich

origin
According to Greco-Roman tradition, the west wind was warm and usually gentle. Its Latin name, Favonius, is the basis for the English adjective "favonian" and derives from roots that are akin to the Latin fovēre, meaning "to warm." [Merriam-Webster's online]

The West Wind by Tom Thomson (1917).

stonepicnicking_okapi

caseous

[key-see-uhs ]

adjective

1. cheeselike, especially in appearance, smell, or consistency:

2. Pathology. having the cheeselike physical effects of caseation [which is necrosis with conversion of damaged tissue into a soft cheesy substance]

origin

First recorded in 1650–60; from Latin cāse(us) cheese + -ous

examples

She said the cheese I had bought had an unforgivably caseous stench and would not allow it in the house.
The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives for the Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene Ehrlich

Its most abundant principles are cream, caseous matter or curd, and whey.
Dadd, George

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