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...
railfan
The Wikipedia entry for railfan contains a small trove of unfamiliar-to-me words. The term itself has the meaning you'd probably expect: someone who's interested in railroads. But the article also...
STFW
I've known the phrase "RTFM" for many years, and I've been using the phrase "TSOR" for about three years, but I had never previously encountered "STFW." At first I thought...
fuller
I had heard of fuller's earth before, but I had always thought it was named after someone named "Fuller." (Doesn't "Fuller's Earth" sound like the name of a science fiction...