Archive for June, 2006

moulage

My favorite new word from recent weeks is "moulage." MW11 has a relatively staid definition: "an impression or cast made for use especially as evidence in a criminal investigation." But...

rutter

According to James Clavell's Shogun, "[a] rutter was a small black book [used for ocean navigation] containing the detailed observation of a pilot who had been there before." Such a...

spaewife

According to Wikipedia, "spaewife [...] is a Scottish term for a fortune-telling woman." It adds: "'Spae' is derived from the Old Norse 'spá,' meaning prophesy." MW3 suggests that synonyms include...

ogive

I think after I looked this one up, I remembered having seen it before. But it's a good word, so: an "ogive" is (among other things) a pointed arch. It's...

entheogen

According to Wikipedia, an entheogen is "a psychoactive substance [. . .] that occasions enlightening spiritual or mystical experience." Specifically: In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown...

LSD

I always vaguely wondered how "lysergic acid diethylamide" got abbreviated as "LSD." I think I figured (or had been told) that the S came from "lySergic," but that didn't make...