Word of the Day!

anthropophagite [an-thruh-pof-uh-jahyt]

noun:
eater of human flesh; cannibal

Examples:

'Red Dragon,' which opens nationwide today, is a thriller too timid to thrill because it's the devil we not only know, but that audiences have come to love; it features the best known anthropophagite since Grendel stalked the world of Beowulf. (Elvis Mitchell, Film Review: Taking A Bite Out Of Crime, New York Times, October 2002)

Her prepublication party - an abstracted anthropophagite feast (the photo is by partygoer Bill Richert) - didn't include her dad's recipe for steak tartare, but given her point that we all have 'cannibals in our closets', I think it might come in handy if the global food crisis continues to worsen. (Mike Sula, Carole Travis-Henikoff's steak tartare, Chicago Tribune, June 2008)

The anthropophagites on 'The Walking Dead' on Sunday didn’t discriminate between Daryl the redneck and Rick, a sheriff’s deputy. (Elvis Mitchell, In a Hell, but in It Together, New York Times, October 2014)

The thoroughbred Anthropophagite usually begins with his own relations and friends; and so long as he confines his voracity to the domestic circle, the law interferes little, if at all, with his venerable propensities. (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, What Will He Do With It)

Are not all those sovereigns, who to gratify the vanity of the priesthood, torment and persecute their subjects, who sacrifice to their anthropophagite gods human victims, men whom superstitious zeal has converted into tygers? (baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbac, The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World)

Origin:

1807, from Greek anthrōpophagos 'man-eating,' from anthrōpos 'man, human' (see anthropo-) + phagos 'eating' (from PIE root bhag- 'to share out, apportion; to get a share') (Online Etymology Dictionary)

sploot [sploot]

verb:
(slang, of an animal) to lie flat on the stomach with the legs stretched out
noun:
the act or an instance of splooting

            
(click to enlarge)

There’s the classic sploot (one leg remains beneath the body while the other leg is kicked back), the side sploot (one leg is tucked under the body while the other is kicked out to the side) and a full sploot (the animal has kicked both legs behind the body, exhibiting a full body stretch). (Hannah Docter-Loeb, Who Sploots?, Slate, August 2022)

But even in the chillier climes like Laramie, squirrels will sploot on warmer days. The upside to what Koprowski called heat islands is that cement sidewalks, while also retaining heat, will retain cooler temperatures while in the shade. (Joshua Wood, U W Professor, Who Is World’s Foremost Authority On Squirrels, Says Splooting Is OK, Cowboy State Daily, August 2022)

Snellby Kay said her household refers to the position as "road kill pose," and Brianna Portillo called it the "sploot." (Sophie Lloyd, Cat's Bizarre Sleeping Position Confuses Internet: 'Airplane Mode', Newsweek, July 2023)

I think a senior cat who still gets the zoomies would love her own bean bag chair to sploot in! (Eve Vawter, Scottish Fold Cat’s Beanbag Sploot Is the AMSR Therapy Session We Didn’t Know We Needed, Parade Pets, April 2025)

Origin:

Sploot is part of a growing lexicon of 'DoggoLingo', which uses cute, deliberate misspellings and onomatopoeias like mlem, blep, smol, borf, and heckin to fawn over man’s best friend online - and the many, many pictures and videos we post of them. While the exact origins of sploot are unclear, lexicographer Grant Barrett of the A Way with Words radio show has suggested that the term sploot may riff on the word splat to characterize the splat-like (flat, spread-out) appearance of a sploot pose. This wordplay mirrors other changes made to existing words in DoggoLingo, like the substitution of chonky for chunky. Sploot is especially associated with corgis, a squat breed of dogs with very short legs. The use of sploot, as associated with pets, is evidenced by at least 2012. (Dictionary.com)

legerdemain [lej-er-duh-meyn]

noun:
1 sleight of hand
2 a display of skill or adroitness

Examples:

In Open Eye's itsy-bitsy performing space, Sass has constructed a set filled with tricks and gimmicks: old-fashioned bulletin boards animate themselves, objects move on their own, characters appear from and disappear to unexpected places. Some of the legerdemain is how'd-they-do-that pieces of stage magic, while other bits are visual distraction. (Dominic P Papatola , Theater review: These 'Red Shoes' can't be tied with a bow. And that's a good thing , Twin Cities, March 2017)

Poirot reacts to all this legerdemain with a disbelieving scowl, even when he can't fully explain the hair-raising tricks his eyes and ears are playing on him. (Justin Chang, Review: With 'A Haunting in Venice,' Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie series hits its stride , Los Angeles Times, September 2023)

The magician on stage is all-powerful to the mesmerised audience, pulling the rabbit out of his hat, sawing pretty ladies in half, making members in the audience disappear and a host of other tricks in his legerdemain (Ravi Shankar, Why poll Houdini Prashant Kishor isn't a neta, The New Indian Express, February 2022)

Every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception - chattering away all the while - but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad)

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. (Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera)

(click to enlarge)

early 15c, 'conjuring tricks, sleight of hand,' from Old French léger de main 'quick of hand,' literally 'light of hand.' Léger 'light' in weight (Old French legier, 12c) is from Latin levis 'light' (from PIE root legwh- 'not heavy, having little weight'). Main 'hand' is from Latin manus (from PIE root man- 'hand'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In Middle French, folks who were clever enough to fool others with fast-fingered illusions were described as leger de main, literally 'light of hand'. English speakers condensed that phrase into a noun when they borrowed it in the 15th century and began using it as an alternative to the older sleight of hand. (That term for dexterity or skill in using one's hands makes use of sleight, an old word from Middle English that derives from an Old Norse word meaning 'sly.') In modern times, a feat of legerdemain can even be accomplished without using your hands, as in, for example, 'an impressive bit of financial legerdemain.' (Merriam-Webster)

fumarole [fyoo-muh-rohl]

noun:
a hole in or near a volcano, from which vapor rises

(click to enlarge)

On Wednesday afternoon, Popocatépetl emitted a huge fumarole that split in the middle, eventually taking the shape of a giant heart as it rose into the sky. (Flights suspended in Puebla as Popocatépetl volcano grumbles, The Washington Post, Mexico News Daily 2024)

Gas vents, also known as fumaroles, are also activating around the volcano's summit and Crater Peak vents, the latter being the location where the 1953 and the 1992 eruptions occurred. (Sam Walters, Activity at Alaska’s Mount Spurr Suggests That The Volcano Is About To Erupt, Discover, May 2025)

Downhill from Viti, the landscape belches audible steam blasts from a fumarole at Hverir, a misty, moody landscape with hiking paths that go past scalding ponds not far from the warm Myvatn Nature Baths, where we recovered from our hikes and talked geology with the Danish couple. (Elaine Glusac, Driving Iceland’s Overlooked North, The New York Times, June 2022)

He did the trick with a fumarole of cigarette smoke escaping from her lips. ( Robert D McFadden, Hiro, Fashion Photographer Who Captured the Surreal, Dies at 90, The New York Times, August 2021)

In ordinary climates, a fumarole, or volcanic vapour-well, may be detected by the thin cloud of steam above it, and usually one can at once feel the warmth by passing one's hand into the vapour column, but in the rigour of the Antarctic climate the fumaroles of Erebus have their vapour turned into ice as soon as it reaches the surface of the snow plain. (Ernest Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic)

Directly overhead, in the face of an almost perpendicular cliff, were three of the cavern mouths, which had the aspect of volcanic fumaroles. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Seven Geases)

Origin:

Italian fumarola, from Italian dialect (Neapolitan), from Late Latin fumariolum vent, from Latin fumarium smoke chamber for aging wine, from fumus (Merriam Webster)