Words & Stuff

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...

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...

"Arthrogryposis" is any of several congenital conditions in which one or more joints get stuck in an extended position. Not sure where I came across this; someone's blog, maybe?...

I saw the movie of The Da Vinci Code the other day, which led eventually to my reading the Wikipedia entry on the (fictional, as it turns out) organization known...

I think (judging by the MW11 definition) that "strake" is the generic term for any strip or band of hull planking (or plating) on a boat or ship. Hard to...

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...

I've seen epergnes plenty of times: they're those structures used at fancy dinners and teas and such, with tiers to hold serving dishes and candles and so on. But I...

The "bleak," also known as the "blay" and the "blick," is a particular "small European river fish," according to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. But what interests me more is that...

I was familiar with the word "area," of course, but I didn't know 'til recently that the adjective form is "areal." ...you can get the same volume of magnetic dipoles...