chyme
As food travels through the digestive system, it spends some time in the stomach, where it's turned into a "semifluid mass" (says MW11) called "chyme." See The Digestive System for...
pyroclastic
Another one from a submission: "pyroclastic" refers to fragmenting due to volcanic action. In the story, I think it was being used as a synonym for "volcanic," but I'm not...
dooley
A submission referred to "Ford dooleys," obviously (from context) a kind of vehicle. I spent a while poking around online trying to find out more; encountered the spellings "doolie," "duelly,"...
nabe
Turns out "nabe" is short for "neighborhood" (in the sense, I think, of the community that lives near you); apparently originally used in the phrase "the nabes" to refer to...
canvas
It turns out that the word "canvas" derives ultimately from the Latin word "cannabis"; which, of course, means "hemp." Not only that, but apparently the word "hemp" itself may be...
novice and eiderdown
At WorldCon, I ran into a couple of reading pronunciations I hadn't heard before. A reading pronunciation happens when you learn a word by reading it rather than hearing it...
fichu
I don't want to turn this blog entirely into words I encountered in Privilege of the Sword, but I do want to note that a "fichu" is a particular kind...
hartshorn
"Hartshorn" is a (perhaps old-fashioned) term for a particular kind of smelling salts (using ammonia); MW11 says it's because harts' horns were once the main source for ammonia. Another one...
chypre
"Chypre" (from French, meaning "Cyprus") is a kind of perfume. I encountered it in Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword....
Scouser
A "Scouser" is a person from Liverpool; which is to say, a Liverpudlian. According to MW3, the name is due to "lobscouse" (a meat and vegetable stew) being popular in...